Is this a Dream, or a Nightmare?
by Klaxmiya
Summary: <html><head></head>Roxas is just trying to have a regular life. Then, an artist named Axel moves in and changes Roxas's life completely. AkuRoku Slight Zemyx and   Riku x Sora   AU   Rated M to be safe *On Hiatus for the month of July*</html>
1. The Guy in My Dreams

**Disclaimer: **I do **NOT **own any of the characters. They all belong to their rightful owner and not me. I only own the story idea. I take no credit for the creation of the characters. Also, all of the songs that are put in here are not mine. I don't take credit for them. They all belong to their respective owners.

**Warning: **Yaoi. If you don't like it, don't read this story!

**Author's Note: **Oh yeah, that's right I did it. I finally got my story up. I started drafting this story on 2011's Easter. I did the character backgrounds, the setting info. And all that. And now, I have finally typed it up! Go me. Anyways, Enjoy!

Chapter 1 - The Guy in my Dreams

_I was walking down a dark street. How was I looking at myself? I don't get it._

"_Your mind's made up?" It was the words that came out of the mouth of a guy with fire red hair, and the most beautiful emerald green eyes._

"_Why did the key blade choose me? I have to know." I replied. I wasn't even controlling myself. And, what was a Keyblade, and when did it choose me?_

"_You cant turn on the Organization! You get on their bad side, and they'll destroy you!" What was the Organization? Did I use to be part of it? Why would they destroy me?_

"_No one would miss me." What am I talking about? There must be someone who would miss me, right? I started to walk away. _

_The redhead then said quietly, "That's not true, I would." Why would he miss me? I didn't even know him._

Nightmare!

(Now your nightmare comes to life)

Dragged ya down below

Down to the devil's show

To be his guest forever

Peace of mind is less than never

Hate to twist your mind

But God ain't on your side

An old acquaintance severed

Burn the world your last endeavor-

"Roxas! Come on wake up already! You can't sleep forever, you know!"

It was Sora. He was my younger twin brother. Apparently, it's time for me to get up. I wish I could sleep some more, but I was a bit curious about that dream. I don't have it that often, but that's not the first time I've seen it. It freaked me out.

I slowly sit up from the comforts of my bed, yawning and stretching my arms out. It was August 29, the last Monday of August, this day is also known as the first day of school. It was a dreaded day for me. Waking up early was hard to do for me. I looked over at my clock, great, 5:30AM. After I pushed Sora out of my room, I got undressed to take a shower.

After I was done with getting ready for school and everything, I grabbed two slices of toast, buttered them, and grabbed two bananas. When I got done, I saw Sora and Namine, my little sister, waiting by the door. I handed each a slice of toast and a banana.

"Roxas, aren't you going to have some breakfast?" It was said by Namine even though she was younger then me, she was still in my grade level. She was so smart, they let her skip a grade. I was pretty thankful for it, then I could make sure she was going to be okay at her school.

"No, I'm not hungry," I replied with blank face.

"But, breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" Sora protested.

"Then I'll just eat more at lunch, okay Sora?" I tried to reason with him.

"…I guess that'll be okay,"

It was my first day of high school, but I don't think there's anything that special about it. As we went to leave, Cloud told us good-bye. I put in my headphones in and started to walk.

You see, Sora, Namine, and me, we all live in a foster home. It happened pretty recently, but we still get to go to the same school. Our beloved mother had died and out father was someone that we wouldn't be able to live with. So, we were sent to a foster home with a guy named Cloud. I don't know much about him, he's quite mysterious. But, he does seem to be nice enough. There were these other kids there, Zexion, Yuffie, and Selphie. To be honest, I think there were more, but there are always those people who stay at their friends' house so often, that it's like they live there and not here. But, if that's the way they want to live, it has no affect on me, so I don't really care.

As we approached Kingdom Hearts High, I got a bit disappointed that we had to be there, but there isn't much that I could do about it. All I had to do was find room 209, it was my homeroom, and when I get there, I'm probably going to get the rest of my schedule and hopefully a map of the school. When I walked into the school, there was a map on the bulletin board, so I just had to turn left, then turn the corner, go straight until I find that stairs, and when I get up there, I should be able to see the door. That's easy enough. I bid Sora and Namine goodbye, and went to my homeroom.

I found it easily enough, nearly passed up the stairs, but still easily enough. There wasn't anything unique about this school. We had an average football team, average science group and everything like that. The only thing that was a bit different about this school is that, it hasn't had a new student in years. None of the elementary, middle school, or high school has gotten a new student in about 23 years. But it's not like that affects the students here at all, so I guess it's that different.

A bell rang for the signal of the end of homeroom. A couple of students came in quickly, probably trying not to be late. His homeroom teacher's name was Tifa. She had long dark hair, and a chest that most of the guys in the class were staring at. She was his first period math teacher. He was a little bit happy about that. Math may not have been his favorite subject, but it was the easiest for him. If he was tired enough, he could probably sleep for a bit and still understand everything. Then, about 20 minutes into the time of the class, the principal, vice principal, guidance counselor, and a student walked in. Roxas looked at this supposed student wondering who he was. Tifa stopped teaching and gave the teachers her attention. The student also turned to actually looked at the class. The principal decided to speak. When I got a good look at the kid, my eyes widened so wide, I'd thought that they might fall out of my head.

"Class, this is our first new student in 23 years. This is Axel."

He was the guy from my dream.


	2. The Gentleman From Across the Street

**Disclaimer: **I do **NOT **own any of the characters. They all belong to their rightful owner and not me. I only own the story idea. I take no credit for the creation of the characters. Also, all of the songs that are put in here are not mine. I don't take credit for them. They all belong to their respective owners. In addition, all the stores do not belong to me. I'm not advertising, I chose to mention them and I don't own the store in any way shape or form.

**Warning: **Yaoi. I don't know how many times I'll have to mention this but either way. Its probably not going to be a lot in this chapter and there wasn't any last chapter but I thought I'd still put it.

**Author's Note: **Second chapter! Whoo-hoo! I think this one is better then the other chapter and this shows some interaction between the two main characters. The first chapter was just more of an explanation of Roxas's life, I guess. This chapter is a lot longer. I kind of want to say that the first chapter is a prologue, but you have to read chapter one so that this chapter makes sense. Either way, I hope you enjoy reading. I didn't mention this in the other chapter, but please read and review! I'd love to know how I'm doing and maybe some ways to improve. Also, I'm also really open to suggestions. I do know some things to put in, but I'll be happy to but in some of your ideas! Enjoy reading!

Chapter 2 - The Gentleman From Across the Street

After I was over my mini-mental-freak out, I stopped starring at him wide-eyed. His emerald eyes scanned across the room, we locked eyes briefly, and his eyes seemed to stay there. I started to glare at him. When he noticed my glare, he winked at me! I was mad, but I just looked away. I didn't need to deal with him.

"Axel, why don't you sit next to Hayner." Well, at least I don't have to sit near him. There were random seats with no one sitting in them. I didn't even know who Hayner was, but it's not like I need to know that. Either way, I wasn't paying attention to where this person would be sitting. So, when I saw him sit in the seat in front of me, I was a bit confused. Then I realized that the kid next to him was Hayner. I didn't really know what to think. Who knows? Maybe Axel isn't as bad as I'm assuming him to be.

Nothing much happened. I had almost all of my classes with this Axel kid. The only classes I didn't have with him is second and eighth period. But, I do have third period art and fifth period English and lunch with Namine. I also have period four science and fifth period English and lunch with Sora.

School ended and I waited by the front door to wait for Sora and Namine. It didn't take long to find them. They were walking together along with a girl with red hair and a guy with silver. It's nice that they made some new friends. While we started to walk, the guy with silver hair, Riku, and the girl with red hair, named Kairi, had to turn left to go to their buses. Sora, Namine, and I had to turn right so that we could get to our house. When we got on our street, I saw Axel again. He was on the other side of the street. He was walking with a guy that looks a lot like him. They weren't talking very much, but even if they were I doubt I'd be able to hear their conversation. We were just about at our house turning to get to the door, when I saw Axel go into the house across the street. So, I guess I live near Axel now, great.

A day had passed since school started. And today was Tuesday, which meant that I had to get groceries after school. It wasn't that hard of a chore. And I only have to do it every once in a while. Plus, I have a list of food to get so it's not like I just won't know what to get.

School remained uneventful. I started to talk to Hayner today. I was listening to my iPod in homeroom and he asked me what listen I listened to. When I told him I was listening to the band Asking Alexandria, he went into this rank about how rap was way better then metal, but I didn't really care. I just ignored him through most of that rant, but after that, we got along okay. When I went and looked for my siblings when school was over, I found out that Namine had an after-school student council meeting. She was a representative for her homeroom. She told me Cloud would pick her up when it was over. Then Sora told me that Riku was coming over today, which gave me such a relief. I didn't want Sora to be walking home all alone and Riku was there, I didn't trust him or anything, but if something did happen, I know that Riku would know what happened.

I went to the grocery store and bought everything that was on the list. We try to go to the store often and only get a few things because if we get something, we get a decent amount of it because there are so many people in the house, plus they always have a couple friends over. Cloud is a pretty lenient guardian. He does care about us, but if we have to go somewhere or if we want someone to come over, then he thinks we are mature enough to handle it on our own. Either way, I ended up with about ten bags. I had to go to two stores. Luckily for me, eight bags were plastic, so I put four on each on arm. The second store gave me paper bags, which didn't have loops to put my arms through. So, I just carried the two in my arms.

I was walking home and I saw Axel again. I don't even know how I always seen to be in the same place as him, but it just happens. He must have noticed me, because he whistled and it got my attention. He started to walk across the street, towards me.

"Do you want me to help you carry those bags?" he asked it as if we had known each other already.

"No, I don't need you to help me," I said that, and I guess it could have sounded a bit rude, but I didn't try to make it sound like that at all.

"You know, you should accept help when you're asked," and with that, he took to two paper bags, which he could hold in just one arm, and took two plastic bags. This guy is starting to piss me off. I didn't need his help, I even told him, and yet he still tries to help anyways? What the heck? What was his problem.

"But I don't want any help," I responded a bit angrily. I sighed well, I guess he had good intentions. I think that he noticed a wasn't upset with him as much as I sounded.

"So, what's your name?"

"Roxas," I said blankly. I didn't really know what to think of this guy.

"Axel. Got it memorized?" I had a feeling that was a catch fraise of his.

"Yep." We arrived at my foster home. I set down the bags and got my key out of my back pocket, opened the door, picked up the groceries and invited Axel in. As I was walking down the hall, I questioned myself why I had let Axel in. I didn't even know him, and he's in my house. He could have a gun on him or something and I just let him waltz on into my house.

"Where do you want me to put these?" He asked. It actually startled me a bit. My mind was so occupied, that I didn't really pay attention that he was still here.

"Uh, just set them on the counter next to the fridge. Zexion will probably get them later." While I didn't actually want to put that chore on Zexion, but I did have to repay Axel for helping me carry in the food. He is still a guest, even if he is unexpected.

"Do you want something to drink?" I asked him. He just nodded his head to show me yes.

"What do you want? We have pop, milk, juice, water, tea, warm or cold, and cocoa." I glanced over at him, expecting him to reply.

"Hot cocoa," I think he's doing this on purpose. I got a small pot and poured some water in it. I placed it on the stove, turned it on high, and sat down with Axel at the kitchen table, waiting for the water to boil.

"Did you come from your job?" I saw a name tag on his black T-Shirt.

"Huh? Oh, yea I did, I went there only for them to tell me that they changed my shift hours." He didn't really seemed that bothered by it, he probably doesn't even want to work there in the first place.

"Where do you work?" I asked. I was a little curious. There weren't even that many jobs around the place, if he moved here recently, it should've been a bit harder to find a job.

"Hot Topic. It's that one in the mall near the plaza. It's pretty close to the train station." He also seems to know the place around here pretty well. Of course, I found my way around here very fast too, but Sora called me twice saying about how he got lost in town. Maybe Sora just has a bad sense of direction.

Now that I really thought about it, he did kind of look like he just came from a store like Hot Topic. But, at the same time he didn't. He had red spiked hair, which people would assume is obviously dyed. He also had a piercing in his left ear, and all black clothes, plus a spiked belt. He even had a tattoo of teardrops upside-down under his eyes. They weren't huge or anything, but they were definitely noticeable. I liked looking at his eyes rather then his tattoos though.

"I've been there before. I like some of the music there, and some of the band T-Shirts." Well, metal was my favorite kind of music, and they have some cool things there, but I'm not going to obsess over a store like a little girl. Instead, I decided to change the subject.

"How do you get your hair like that anyways? Is it dyed or natural? I was definitely different, but I don't really think any other hairstyle would really fit him.

"What is this twenty questions or something? I could ask you the same thing." He said that with a smile on his face, and a playful spark in his eyes.

What was his problem? I was just asking him a question. This guy is so weird.

"Oh, and to answer your question, the curtains match the carpet," He smiled and winked at me. I blushed. That is something that I didn't need to know about. I took out the packs of cocoa, poured them in and started to mix it.

"That's too much information. Do you want marshmallows?" I showed him a bag full of mini marshmallows.

"Yea," He said.

"How many?"

"Eight," I looked at him weirdly. Who wants eight marshmallows? Why not just have ten?

"What? Is there a problem?" He asked confused.

"No," I said completely disregarding the subject in question.

Sora and Riku started to come down the stairs.

"Hey, Roxas, did you get any popsicles?" He asked walking into the kitchen. He looked at me, looked over at Axel, then stared at our drinks.

"Why are you drinking hot cocoa in the summer?"

I just shrugged and pointed at Axel. Now Sora is my twin, and even though it sounds weird, doing something like this, Sora knows that I mean that Axel wanted the drink without even having to say it out loud.

"What wrong with hot cocoa in the summer? I've had popsicles in the winter to,"

"Yeah, but just about everyone does that," Sora argued.

"So, what's wrong with hot cocoa in the summer?" I defended. I wasn't really sure why I even did that. But Sora just shrugged. Through this little conversation, Riku glanced between me and Axel looking like something he knew was going on and I didn't. I didn't like that, it made me feel uncomfortable.

To avoid getting in a fight with my twin brother, I said,

"Popsicles are in the freezer," Zexion had put everything away. I doubt he'd be mad about it, he probably knew that Axel was over so he didn't really care.

" 'Kay. Thanks Roxas," He said with a smile on his face. I gave him a smile in return and it felt a little melancholy. It was a fake smile of course. It's gotten really hard to smile after what happened, but it did make me happy that Sora was getting better. Riku and Sora went back upstairs after they got a whole box of them.

"Was that your brother?" Axel almost startled me because I forgot that he was here.

"Yeah, he's my younger twin," I replied.

"I thought twins were the same age though." Axel looked at me smiling.

"Well I'm older by, like, three minutes," He started to laugh at me!

"What are you laughing at?" I questioned angrily. There was nothing funny about me being older.

"I'm not laughing at anything," Well, he stopped laughing, but he still had a smile on his face.

I heard Cloud's car pulling in. That meant that Namine was home.

"Who's that?" Axel asked.

"It's my little sister, Namine, she's back from that student council meeting."

I went out to go and greet her, Axel came along with me.

When Cloud got out of the car he greeted me.

"Hey Roxas, could you do me a chore?" Chores were fine, I just didn't like the chores were I had to deal with food, like cleaning the dishes.

"Yea?"

"Could you wash the car? It hasn't been cleaned in weeks, and really needs to be."

I smiled. I liked to wash the car, it wasn't really hard work, and I didn't get to do it often. Plus, it was summer and like eighty-something degrees outside so it'll feel nice to wash the car.

Just then, from across the street, someone from Axel's house came outside. When he noticed Axel, he asked from across the steet,

"Yo, Axel! Are you going to be okay over there for a couple of hours?"

Axel glanced at me asking if it was okay that I stayed there. I just nodded, I mean, it's not like I could actually say no to stuff like that.

"Yeah, were you goin'?" He asked.

"Business meeting. I wanted you to stay over there so that you won't burn our house down," He replied, and not joking. He looked serious.

I looked over at Axel, raising an eyebrow. He just gave me a look that said 'I'll tell you later' and nodded to the second redhead. Namine walked over to Axel and asked,

"Roxas, who is this?" She seemed generally curious, but that's probably because she saw him in our art class and wanted to learn the names of her classmates, she was part of student council after all.

"This is Axel-" But then, he interrupted me.

"I'm the gentleman from across the street."


	3. The Car Wash

**Disclaimer: **Man, this is starting to get annoying. I don't own Kingdom Hearts or it's characters in any way shape or form. I take no credit for them and all I came up with is the story line.

**Warning: **Yaoi. Again I don't know when, but I do want you readers to know that it will be here.

**Author's Note: **Chapter 3! Finally, I didn't know I was going to make it. I'm supposed to be doing a take home test, but I want to finish this chapter. Please review, I'd really like to know how bad or good I'm doing. Have fun reading!

Chapter 3 - The Car Wash

"Psh, yeah right!" I said back to him.

Namine's phone started to ring, and Namine looked at the collar ID.

"Hey Roxas, I have to take this, I'll talk to you at dinner, okay?" She said quietly. She wasn't shy or anything, her voice was just soft.

"Okay see you," I said, I was also glad she made a friend, but I have a feeling that friend of hers likes Sora too much and she acts really creepy around him.

"So, are we gonna get started on this car, or what?" Axel reminded me.

"Oh, yeah," I went into the kitchen again, and in the laundry room, which was through the door next to the fridge, I got two big buckets. I put the soap in it that you would use to clean a car and put them under the sink to fill up with water. While I waited for that, I got out two sponges, which I set on the counter next to the sink. I told Axel to watch that the buckets don't overflow, and went upstairs to my room. I grabbed an old T-Shirt and old pants. Then I went one over and across the hall, it was Xigbar's room. He didn't come by often, but that's only because he takes high school classes, and then extra school classes, he has a job almost everyday, and he does like to go to his friends' house every once in a while. I went through his closet and got an old shirt of his and an old pair of pants. He seemed about Axel's size, so I think these would be able to fit him. I didn't really think Xigbar would mind, so I just took them.

I came back downstairs and tossed the clothes to him. The door to the kitchen was closed and we've had gym locker room changes together so it didn't really matter that we got dressed in front of each other. When we were done, I got the sponges and Axel grabbed to buckets. We went out of the back door that was by the kitchen table. When I walked to the side of the house, I got the hose out and turned on the water. The water never came out of the hose because I had to press the button. Axel and I then went to the car and we set the supplies down.

First thing I did was rinse the car off. Then, Axel and I grabbed the sponges and started to wash the car. I decided I might as well start a conversation with him.

"Who was that guy that came out of your house anyways?" I asked. I wasn't much of a conversation starter, so I thought I would just start with a question.

"He's my older brother, Reno," He replied. They looked a lot alike, I wouldn't be surprised if some people called them twins.

"And no, he isn't my twin brother." That kind of weirded me out because I was just thinking about that, but it was probably just a coincidence.

"I wouldn't imagine you having a brother when I first saw you,"

"Oh, so you're thinking about me now?" There he goes again. I could feel heat on my face and I tried to face away from him so that he wouldn't notice my blush.

I just muttered a 'no' and went back to washing the car.

"The weather is way to hot," I complained. It wasn't late in the day or anything, it must have been between four or five o'clock. I knew that I said that it would be fun to wash the car in the summer time, but that's only when you're actually done and get to cool off in the house. Right now was the hard part.

"Oh, is it?" Axel questioned. Well of course it was, it was summer. I gave him a look that said 'Duh, of course it is, what are you, an idiot?' but he just went over to a bucket and dipped his sponge in it. He came walking towards me. He was probably just going to go to wash some other part of the car, so I didn't really bother to watch him anymore.

"Ahhh!" I screamed. Ice cold soapy water was just poured all over my head, it even went down my back. He was such an ass. I glared at him.

"What did you do that for?" I accused him. He had this huge grin on his face.

"You said you were hot, so I thought I'd cool you down," He started to laugh. I crossed my arms, and while I waited for him to stop laughing, I saw the hose. So, I picked it up, and turned it on, getting him completely soaked. He stopped laughing, which is a pretty good thing, else I might have to make it worse.

"What? I have to be polite and return the favor." I smiled at him like I had done something very kind.

"That's Hilarious." He replied. I knew he was going to do something. But, I wasn't sure how. He just casually walked up to me, his hands behind his back. I held up the hose as if it was my only means of protection and weapon.

I got a bucketful of soapy water dumped on me. It felt kind of like getting a shower, and you have your hair all shampooed up and then you stand under the water, not caring to tilt back your head and instead getting shampoo in your face, but then the water rinses most of it off anyways.

I just starred at him, like I just couldn't believe that he actually did that, which I couldn't. I was soaked and all my clothes were clinging to me, which got annoying. I was dripping wet, and the drops from my hair went under my shirt and tickled my back in an icy feeling. He started to laugh again. I put my hand on my hip and asked,

"What's so funny?" I was acting like I wasn't soaking wet and he was laughing for not reason.

"You!" I wasn't happy with the answer, so I started to spray him with the hose again. He started to use the empty bucket as a shield. Before I could try to get him any more wet, we just started to laugh. We were both idiots, very wet idiots. Before I turned off the hose, I rinsed off any of the soap that was still on the car and turned off the hose.

"So, are we done?" Axel asked. Before I answered I glanced behind him and noticed the second bucket of soapy water just sitting there. That's when I knew how to get back at him.

"No, I just need to do one more thing," I walked behind him and I don't think he knew what I was doing. I picked up the bucket, and dumped it on him, just as he did to me.

"Okay, I'm done now," I said, smiled at his wet form.

"We'll let that one slide, you got off lucky this time," He had this look in his eye that was telling me that what he just said was a promise. Then he winked at me again, showing that he was playing around again. I blushed a bit and started to walk back in the house with a bucket with sponges in it and the hose. When we got to the side of the house, I ringed the hose back up and when we enter the kitchen, we went to the laundry room and set the buckets down in the wash basin so that the water will go down the drain instead of on the floor. I went back up to my room, leading Axel so that we could get changed into dry clothes. On the way, I went to the closet next to the bathroom and got out two towels. When we were in my room, I handed Axel his clothes and went to my closet to get out something. I decided to get out a Disturbed band T-Shirt and a pair a black straight legs. When I was finished dressing, I started to dry my hair. I was glancing around my room, noticing I still had some stuff to unpack. It was something I always postponed and I never got all my clothes out of my suitcase up until Sora wanted to borrow one of my shirts and we decided to hang them all up in my closet. I noticed that I still had to hang up some pictures and posters on my wall. In fact, I had a lot to unpack, but I didn't really care, if I hadn't need that junk for that long, I doubt I'm going to unpack it anytime soon.

"You know what you should do before you hang up those posters?" Axel brang it up. He probably noticed the pile of posters sitting on top of the boxes I needed to unpack.

"What?" I asked.

"You should paint these walls." If you ask me, that sounded like a good idea, I think that this room should have a different wall color instead of just white.

**Author's Note:** Okay, I used the ending as something I have been wanting to write about. I can always see Axel as an artist. I think it's because one day, I saw a picture of Axel with his hair tied up and the T-Shirt he had on wasn't anything special, so I thought it could just be an old shirt or something. So that idea came up. Oh, and also, I have washed a car before, but I was so little, I mainly just rubbed soap on a car, I don't really know if you have to wash it a certain way or not, but I tried my best. Please R&R.


	4. Soon Enough

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kingdom Hearts, or it's characters in any way shape or form. Trust me, if I owned them, Yaoi fan girls would be dieing happily from nosebleeds every time they played Kingdom Hearts.

**Warning:** Yaoi, obviously. To anyone who might be wondering, this is going to be a pretty long story, so I want a portion of it to be Roxas and Axel trying to get together in the first place. So, there will be Yaoi hints in the chapters they aren't together, but nothing much until they are.

**Author's Note:** Guys, I am a horrible person. I wanted to upload this yesterday. I typed a bit of this Friday night, and a bit on Saturday. Saturdays are usually days I go out with friends. That is what happened yesterday. Please forgive me! Oh, and if you guys are kind enough to forgive me, please leave a review. Thanks and have a good time reading.

Chapter 4 - Soon Enough

After the whole car wash episode, me and Axel hung out for a couple of hours. Reno came and told him to come home at about ten o'clock. Riku ended up spending the night over, and Yuffie ended up braking a window. How she did that, I don't even want to know. I spent a lot of the day looking through some of the stuff I didn't unpack. Namine also borrowed my laptop so that she could make some drawings to upload to some website. I didn't mind, it was probably how she was going to kick off her artist career.

The next morning, as we left for school, Xigbar joined us on our walk. This was the high school he went to, but he usually had work from 3:00AM-7:00AM. He usually didn't walk there, he drove to the school. But, he's lucky because school actually starts at 7:35 so he still has time to get changed into school clothes and get to the school.

I walked into homeroom that morning, there were only three or four other kids there. When I was on my way to my desk, I looked at Axel and he smiled at me, it was like his way of greeting me. I smiled back at him and nodded my head. Greeting him back. I sat down in my seat and he turned around.

"Hey Roxy!" I got irritated. Roxy wasn't my name, Roxas is.

"It's not Roxy, it's Roxas," I corrected him. I hope this was the only time he was going to do this.

"Aww, but Roxy is funner to say then Roxas, and it's faster to say, too!"

"Okay, first of all, funner isn't a word, it's more fun." He rolled his eyes at my corrections.

"And second, Roxy isn't my name, it's the name for a girl, and I refuse to be called as a name as degrading as that." I hated the name Roxy, it was fine for a girl, or anything else for that matter, but I didn't want anyone to call me that.

"Ooh, Roxy's going all sexist on us." I started to glare at him. I wasn't sexist, I think girls are equal. But I do have pride, and I don't want to be called by a girl's name.

"I'm not sexist. I just don't want to be called by a girls name," I crossed my arms, I thought that wanting to be called by my name was perfectly logical.

"So, anyways," He decided to change the subject, "I got a lot of shades of paint colors we could paint your room with. I brought a couple you might like."

He handed me a few strips of paper with a color, like red, and then six variations of the color. The last color being the lightest, the first the darkest and the middle the actual color.

"We can also do more then one color, or we could get a mural thing going on," I looked at him and he seemed really excited about this. I did want my room to be painted, but I wasn't even looking at colors like this, or even thinking about a mural.

"For the mural, I have stencils and paint sprayers if you want something abstract, or I have a couple of sketches to do for one." When did he find the time to do this? He went home at a time he should start going to sleep, and he didn't look tired at all. It seemed like it was the middle of the day for him. I looked over the sketches.

"When did you find the time to do this?" I asked. I would have been exhausted if this took him as long as I think it did.

"Well, the paint chips are just something I have around all the time, and I made the sketches this morning while I was waiting for Reno to get out of the bathroom."

I looked at one of the sketches. Basically, it was a one color wall, and then vertical stripes, one wide, and then one thin in a pattern like that, that continued for the whole wall. I liked it, it was simple, but I wasn't just one color, or just stripes.

"I like this one." I said. He took it from my hands to look at it.

"This one should be pretty easy. What colors do you want?"

Well, most of the things in my room are dark colors, so I should probably have black. Blue was my favorite color, so I want that in there too.

"Black and blue," I said. He got out two colored pens and I told him how I wanted the different sized stripes to be black and the base wall color to be dark blue.

"Okay, you don't have to pick the shade of black because any other shade would be grey to you, but you still need to pick out a shade of blue." I took out the paint chip for the color blue, and looked at the different shades. I wanted to pick one of the darker shades so that It would go along with the rest of my room.

"I want this shade," I pointed to the shade that almost the darkest, but there was one shade that was. I thought it was a really nice shade of blue.

"Sure," He took the paint chip from my hand and wrote down some number that was on the color shade.

"So, are we done?" I asked to make sure there wasn't anything else.

"We are done," he confirmed.

The bell for first period rang.

"Axel! If you would be so kind to turn around and pay attention, we might be able to get class started." Tifa was yelling at Axel again.

Later, in third period, the art teacher, Saix, told us that we were going to be doing a mural for cafeteria. I looked over at Namine, and her eyes lit up with happiness, I could tell she was excited. I bet she was going to ask Saix if she could take a picture of the mural when it was done so that she could put it on that website. I wasn't that excited, but I would rather paint on a wall then try to do some sculpture of human proportions or something difficult like that. When class ended, I saw Namine walk off with a girl with blond hair slicked back except for two small groups that looked like antennas, and someone with medium, layered pink hair. She was talking animatedly with them, and they seemed to be smiling at her happiness.

I carried on my way to science class. Today was Wednesday, so it was life science. I don't know why people didn't just call it health, but who was I to go against school subject's names? When I went into the class, I died a little on the inside, again. Our science teacher, Vexen, disturbed me. It was hard to explain, but it was like he was out to get me or something. I shuddered at him on Monday when I first met him.

Class started to begin. Science was naturally really easy for me, all the names of things make sense, and if there is something that is actually named with a level of difficulty, there's always one per chapter, so you really just need to remember one thing. About halfway through class, a paper airplane glided onto my desk.

"Mister Axel! Do I need to give you a detention for throwing paper airplanes?" Well, that's great, I'll probably get into trouble for this too.

"No sir, I don't deserve detention because I used science to throw the airplane and get the proportions correct so that it could fly," Axel back talked, he was getting a detention for sure. While Vexen was so focused on yelling at Axel about how that was physics and not the science we were doing, I quickly took the paper airplane and unfolded it. I folded it up as small as I could and I 'dropped my pencil. I shoved the piece of paper under the table leg. It was a square that was hollow, so the paper didn't make the table leg tilt up. When Vexen was done yelling at Axel, he decided to come towards me, probably to look at what the note said.

"Where is the note?" He questioned me accusingly.

"What note?" I asked so innocently like I didn't even know Axel made a note.

"The note that was on your desk."

"There was a note? I don't have one." I knew Vexen wouldn't be able to find one. I had to empty out my pockets, and Vexen went through my entire book bag, every paper in the folders, binders and any papers I just shoved in my book bag.

"Sir, I don't have a note," Everyone started to laugh when they realized that I didn't have a note. Even Axel gave me a look that said 'what did you do with the note?'

After a while, when the whole ordeal started to die down, I 'dropped' my pencil again. When I went to pick it up, I got the note out from under the desk. It read, "_Wanna sit together at lunch? -Axel"_ I ripped off the corner of the paper and wrote "Sure" on it. Then, I got out a wooden pencil, and broke the tip. I walked up to the pencil sharpener and when I passed Axel's desk, I sat the paper down on his pencil and started to sharpen my pencil.

At lunchtime, Sora brought Riku to sit with us and Namine brought the two she was talking to after art class. When I asked her if everything was ok between her and Kairi, she said that she just wasn't in this lunch. I learned that the girl with blonde hair was named Larxene and that she had a bit of a temper, she also seemed to keep staring at Axel, which got me a bit irritated, but I just shrugged the feeling off. I also learned that the kid with pink hair was a guy named Marluxia, but Namine liked to call him Marly. Even though he looked a lot like a girl, he had a very deep, manly voice that it makes it hard to believe that he could be mistaken for a girl if you were to close your eyes. When Sora saw Zexion he told him to come over and sit with us. He didn't really have a say in the matter because Demyx wanted to talk with all of us. Demyx already knew me, Sora, and Namine from Zexion, but he also seemed to know Axel, Larxene, and Marluxia. Him and Riku seemed to get along just fine too.

When lunch was over, we went to gym class. We had to run laps on the track field to practice for the mile run. It's not as hard as it seems. When a mile is running in a large circle four times, it looks a lot smaller. I was pretty good in sports. I wasn't the best, and I was rarely picked first, but I was pretty good, I was never picked last or even that close to last. I was pretty good at running too. I never really got tired enough that I had to stop and walk, and I was fast enough that I got a good time and one year I made a record.

When we started to run though, I saw Axel running so fast that it was ridiculous. At first, I started to think he just started with a dash and wasn't going to keep it up, but at the beginning of the race, he was in second place, then he easily past the kid in first place, and he started to get even farther ahead. When he was on his last lap, he started to speed up even more. He broke the record but that was common sense if you were see how fast he ran. When we were getting dressed, I decided to say, "Axel, are you in track, or cross-country?"

"Yea, I'm in cross country, but it doesn't start until fall. I didn't feel like joining track this year, I did honor's art instead."

"Namine is doing honor's art too," I said. I'm really used to talking to people who like art, I always hear Namine talk about it. It's not annoying at all or anything, I just know a lot thanks to her.

"Yeah, so what do you like?" I don't really like to talk about myself that much, it always feels really awkward when I am. I guess that's because I already know what I like or feel, so I always assume other people would and I don't feel a need to tell people about it, but that is just what my brother always says.

"Writing and music," I always try to keep it short.

"Ooh, a writer, what do you write about?" he actually looked interested which was pretty weird. I wasn't really sure how I would answer.

"Uh…just stuff and…stuff," I didn't really know. I just didn't really know how to answer.

"So it's personal, I see how it is," He looked down dejected, like a kicked puppy. I could tell he was just kidding around though.

"Come on Mr. Crybaby, we're gonna be late for class if you keep crying," We started to laugh and walk to class.

After school, Axel came over so that we can get my room prepared so that we could paint it. My room was at the end of the hallway, so we could put most of my stuff in the hallway without blocking anyone else's room. We even took the bed out, and Axel said that I could just stay at his house until we were done.

We were also going to paint my door black, so all we had to cover with aluminum foil was the doorknob and window. We also mopped the floor. I don't know why, Axel just told me that it was best for painting a room. Then, we covered the floor with paper. I didn't want to get paint on the floor. We also filled in the nail holes that the people who owned this house before us made. Then, Axel primed the walls, he said that it was very important thing to do. We also covered my light switches and electric plugs entirely with tape so that they didn't get paint on them. We used this special tape called painter's tape. After all that was done, Axel started to measure my room.

"Why are you measuring my room?" I asked.

"Well I want all of the wide stripes to be the same size, the thin stripes to be the same size, and the space in between to be the same. I'm measuring the room so that I can make little marks that will show. Before we can do the stripes though, I want to do the base color first. Then, we'll paint the stripes on."

"So how long is this going to take?" It sounded like a really complicated process.

"Not that long, we're done with the preparations." He walked up to me and ruffled my hair, "Don't worry, we'll get done soon enough."

**Author's Note: **Okay guys, I hope that makes up for not updating yesterday. I only know how to prepare a room for painting it because I looked up how to on . It's a really good site. I do know how to paint a room with stripes though. My mom did it for my room when I was younger. You paint the wall one color of the stripes, then you get tape and outline how wide you want the stripes and paint in the lines. Usually the first color should be lighter so that it is easier to paint the stripes. Whence the stripes are done, you just take off the tape, which should be painter's tape because it won't mess up the tape. Anyways! I hope you guys liked it and please review! I want to know what you think of my story!


	5. Sora's Sexuality & Strawberry Milkshakes

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters in any way, nor do I claim they are mine. The story plot line is mine though.

**Warning: **Yaoi. Boy x Boy. If you don't like it, then why are you here? Anyways, it's not in this chapter, though it will have a bit a fluff considering that they aren't together yet. I think. It really depends on your opinion on what's fluffy and what's not.

**Author's Note:** I don't really have anything much to say about this chapter to be honest. It's really surprising but oh well. I hope you guys like it, and please read and review!

Chapter 5 - Sora's Sexuality and Strawberry Milkshakes

After we got the preparations done for painting, we decided that we wouldn't be painting the room until Friday night, that way if it takes long, we won't be exhausted in school or anything like that. Cloud was cool with me spending the night at Axel's house on Wednesday and Thursday night.

School wasn't the best on today. First of all, I was late to homeroom, I don't think that the teacher cared all that much, but that must have been a bad omen, because a lot of the day just went down from there. I got a headache from reading in second period, it hurt pretty bad, but I had a whole day to go through, so I just pushed the pain down and tried to go through with my day.

After fourth period, Axel and I started to walk down the hallway, were started to talk about how bad Vexen smelled today.

"Sometimes I wonder if that guy even knows what a shower is." I started to laugh, but then all of a sudden, a forced shoved me into the row of lockers in the hallway.

"You gay emo! You shouldn't be laughing! Go and burn in hell!" It sounded like Seifer's voice. He seemed to be a pretty big bully. Last year, he was calling Sora a gay retard. Then, I watched as Axel grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and lift him up off of the ground.

"Don't touch Roxas again, unless you want to be beaten from an inch of your life." Seifer just smirked as the bell rang. Axel just let go of him and he started to walk to class.

At lunchtime, I noticed Sora was looking a bit nervous, but I tried to ignore it. It was probably something small, like a presentation soon or a test he didn't study for.

"Roxas, can I talk to you…privately?" I was a bit curious on if this is the reason he was looking so nervous, I hope I didn't do something that upset him.

"Sure," We decided to talk in the bathroom because the teachers don't care if you're in the bathroom or not, but we sneaked up to one of the bathrooms upstairs because there was no one in there.

"So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Um…well, if I told you something weird, you would still love me as a brother and support me, right?"

"Of course, why what is it? Did you break the law or something?" I half joked, Sora would never break a law.

"Well, I'm, uh, I'm gay Roxas. I like guys." I was a little shocked. Now don't get me wrong, I'm in no way a homophobe, I even go to some gay pride conventions because I think it's cruel how society treats people who are trying to find love. But, I really never thought about Sora being gay. It must be a bit hard for him, I don't know how many people he has told yet.

"Uhm…okay," I didn't really know what I should say, "I'm fine with that and all, uhm, is there something you need my help with? Support and stuff? Maybe telling Cloud about this or something?" Sora gave me a huge smile. He started to give me a huge,

"Oh Roxas! Thank you! You're so understanding, I'm glad that I told you!"

I was just happy he trusted me enough to tell me something like that. He let go of me and then gave me a suspicious eye. I looked at him, confused.

"So, Roxas, you're pretty accepting. Are you gay too? I know you just _love _Axel,"

Well, that's the second time someone has called me gay today, terrific. Even though I was positive I wasn't gay, I felt heat come to my face.

"Sora, I am not! Don't even joke about that!" He started to giggle.

"Just teasing! But I do seem to see a blush layering your cheeks. Is that something suspicious?" He was still smiling.

"No, it's nothing suspicious, I'm just catching a cold, you know. Flu season is on it's way and all. I'll take a vitamin after dinner." It sounded like a pretty logical lie, but I knew Sora didn't believe it. He let it slide though, which I was thankful for.

"So, who do _you _like?" I was pretty curious, even though we sound like two gossiping girls right now. I saw Sora's face go red, and he turned his head away.

"…Riku," he mumbled.

I smiled, Sora had his first crush, he was growing up, mentally. He got his growth spurt already.

"Is he gay too?" I asked. I was a bit worried about that. If Riku wasn't and Sora told him, it could ruin their friendship, and even I can see that Sora wouldn't be able to bear with that.

"I heard from Kairi that he is, and she is usually right when it comes to stuff like that."

The bell rang, and Sora said that he would talk to me at home, running out so that he wasn't late to his next class. Today was Thursday, so I had to go all the way to the French room. I walked out of the bathroom and turned the corner only to crash into a very sturdy, but warm chest.

"Roxy! I was just looking for you! Come on, we have to get going before we are late!"

After school, Axel and I stopped by a store to get some paint. It was different then I thought. Instead of picking out the colors I wanted by comparing it to the color on the color chips Axel gave me, he gave the employee the numbers that was on the colors. We ended up getting the same color, so I guess that it was some kind of code for that specific color. We also got those paint rollers, and then actual paint brushes and a bin that we pour the paint into and roll the paint rollers on.

So, on the walk home, Axel asked, "So, what did Sora want to talk about?"

"Uh, well, I don't know if I should really tell you, it's like a secret of his, and I don't just want to go around telling anyone, you know?" Axel nodded in understanding. I did kind of want to tell him, it's been nice being able to tell things to someone, something I never really did until Axel came along, but I had to respect that this is probably something Sora didn't really want too many people to know. He likes Axel, but I don't know if Sora's okay with me just saying his sexuality to anyone I want.

We got home and set the paint stuff upstairs in my room. After that, we went downstairs into the kitchen.

"Strawberry Milkshake?"

"Sure."

I got out a blender, light cream, milk, strawberry ice cream, honey, strawberries, and crushed ices. I also got a measuring cup and measuring spoons.

I put in a half cup of light cream, and milk; a cup of strawberry ice cream, and strawberries; a tablespoon of honey, and two tablespoons of crushed ice into a blender, and blended it all together. While I waited for it to blend, I got out two big cups, a jar of cherries, and whip cream. I poured the milkshake into the cups and put on a swirl of whip cream and a cherry on each. I picked up the can of whip cream and walked over to Axel.

"Open your mouth." He gave me a questioning look but opened his mouth anyway. I sprayed in some of the whip cream. After he swallowed he chuckled a bit.

"Now, feed me," I demanded. He smiled and held out his hand for me to hand him the whip cream. And I opened my mouth waiting for the whip cream. He sprayed in some of the soft cream, and when I closed my mouth to swallow it, he sprayed a bit on the tip of my nose. I furrowed my eyebrows and crossed my eyes to look at it. I took my finger and wiped it off of my nose and ate the whip cream off of my finger. I took Axel's hang and faced his palm toward the ceiling. I sprayed the rest of the whip cream onto his hand. I threw out the empty can of whip cream and put a straw in each of the drinks.

We watched TV while drinking our drinks, but we didn't really pay much attention, we were really just talking. Then, the doorbell rang, and Axel and I both got up to answer the door. When I answered it, Reno was at the door.

"Axel, I finished raking the back yard, do you want to set this crap on fire, or not?"

"Yeah, thanks for telling me, Roxas, d'you wanna come with me?" I didn't have anything else to do so why not?

"Sure," I saw Sora walking down the hall.

"Hey, Sora, I'll be across the road at Axel's house if you need anything, okay?" Sora did like to know where I was incase he needed something.

"Okay Roxas, have fun," then he winked reminding me of what we talked about at lunch.

"Shut up," I mumbled, and then started to walk across the street with Axel and Reno.

When we got to Axel's backyard, there was a huge piles of leaves and twigs on what looked like a burn pile.

"Reno, how'd you get the pile to get so big?" Reno walked out with a long lighter and some newspaper. He handed them to Axel.

"I raked the neighbors' yard for a couple extra bucks." Axel then put the paper near a very leafy part of the pile. He lit the paper on fire and soon, the whole pile of leaves and twigs were burning in a huge fire. Reno started to walk back into the house saying,

"Just don't burn down the house."

"Are you ever going to let that go?" Axel asked.

"…No" I felt kind of left out of the loop. Did Axel set his house on fire or something?

"What happened to your house?"

"Oh that," Axel gave a sheepish grin, "I was playing with my mom's lighter one day, and set our living room on fire. The fire got put out, but Reno acts as if I burned our house down to ashes or something."

"You pyromaniac,"

"That's not the first time I've heard that," we started to laugh.

A little bit later, we started to work on our French homework. I was so horrible at this language. I was just glad that we only had French on Tuesdays and Thursdays, during sixth period.

"Axel, what does Où est l'hôtel le plus proche à partir d'ici? Mean again?"

"Uh, it's 'Where is the nearest hotel from here?"

"I hate French." I complained.

"Then why did you take it?" Axel asked with a chuckle.

"'Cause I hate Spanish and Chinese even more. The whole world should just speak English."

"No, we couldn't do that. Then, life would be just a little easier, and we can't have that happening, now can we,"

That night, Axel and I didn't go to sleep until midnight because there was a marathon for Saw on, and we wanted to watch it. We were too tired to get a sleeping bag or air mattress out, so we just shared the queen sized bed Axel had in his room. As I went to sleep, I thought about how Axel's pillow smelled like him, just like cinnamon.

**Author's Note:** Okay I'm finished, and I'm really tired. For the Strawberry milkshake recipe, I got that from so I didn't make the recipe at all. I hope you guys like it. Please, please review! I want to know if you guys like my story! Oh, and I'm thinking about rewriting the first chapter. It's like the worst chapter and I want it to be a good one because if people don't like the first chapter, then they might just stop reading. I don't know if I'll get the next chapter up tomorrow, but I'll try my best.


	6. A Promise

**Disclaimer:** Guys! I don't own Kingdom Hearts or it's characters! Whoever told you I did is a liar.

**Warning:** Uh, Yaoi maybe? Slowly, it will increase throughout the chapters.

**Author's Note:** Okay, you guys can just kill me. I typed most of this up yesterday, but I just couldn't get all of it done. I had 100 math problems for this final exam we're having soon. I had to write a final chapter to a book we read in reading (Fan fiction for school work, it was like it was destiny) AND I had to get my haircut at 7:30 and I didn't get back until 9PM. I'm so sorry for being late but I hope you enjoy the chapter, even though it's pretty short, and review.

Chapter 6 - A Promise

When I woke up, my phone started to vibrate, telling me that it was time to get up for school. I was so tired, so I just let it sit there, vibrating. I'm sure that I could sleep in for five more minutes. I actually decided to open up my eyes. When my vision cleared and I saw what was in front of me, my face was set on fire. My face wasn't even an inch away, from Axel's chest, sometimes even clothes with his breathing. I was curled up in a fetal sleeping position. Axel has his left arm under his head as a makeshift pillow, and his right arm draped loosely, but securely around my waist.

I panicked. What was I supposed to do? Should I wake him up and have him let me go? But, that'll make everything awkward. I mean, we were unconscious when we got into this position. He started to shift in his sleep. I saw his eyes open, and pretended to be asleep. He stayed there for a bit, but then got up and yawned. Then he tried to shake me awake.

"Come on Roxas, wouldn't want to be late for school, now would you?" I pretended to be waking up, it was pretty easy because I was still really tired.

We got ready for school and Reno gave us cinnamon toast for breakfast. I was about to decline, since I usually don't eat breakfast, but I thought it would be rude of me, so I ate it anyways.

We stopped by my house so that I could get clean clothes and my jacket. When Axel and me got close to the school, it started to pour down rain. We ran to get into the build, and Tifa asked us if we went swimming before we came to school.

"Man, all that stupid rain made my hair flatten." I looked at him like he was crazy.

"Your hair looks the same as it always does, and you sound like a girl," I joked.

At lunch, Sora told the table that he was gay. No one was really bothered by it, Namine and Kairi giggled, and Larxene gave Marluxia ten bucks, fuming. I told Axel that this is what Sora told me in the restroom yesterday, and Riku told us that they were going out, to which Kairi and Namine giggled more and Larxene gave another twenty to Marluxia, who was chuckling to himself. Demyx and Zexion finally got to our table, about halfway through lunch.

"Guys, I'm so sorry we're late, I made a report on one of my art projects and Saix said that it was only half complete, but it soo was." Demyx pouted.

"You wrote a sentence for each question, you need to have a paragraph at least. Most of the sentences weren't even complete, they were fragments." I tuned out most of the conversation. So, if Sora was gay, did that mean I would be too? I remember hearing on the news that if someone in the family is gay, then the family members have a high chance of being gay, was that even true? I doubt something like that would be, but still.

"Roxas~! Hello? Are you there?" Axel was shaking me, trying to get me out of my thought process. I looked around the cafeteria, and most people were either gone, or leaving. Axel must have noticed because he said,

"Come on, the bell rang, we're gonna be late for gym." I got up and started walking.

"So, Roxas, you're okay with people being gay and all, right?" Axel asked unsurely.

"Well, yeah, I mean people love who they love, right? It's not like it really harms me, so what's really the problem with it?"

Axel sighed with a smile on his face. He looked kind of relieved. "Yeah, that's true."

After school, Axel went to get some old clothes on. I decided that that would be best to do too, so I did. When Axel came in, I noticed he put his hair up in a loose ponytail. It looked really good on him.

When we got to my room, Axel opened the can of blue paint, stirred it, and poured some into the container. We both got a rolling brush and put it in the paint. I seemed to start out in the middle of the wall. I've never really painted like this before, I wasn't even sure what I was doing was correct or not, but it seemed close enough. We were actually pretty well paired for this kind of painting. I was shorter, so I generally got the lower half of the wall, and Axel was so much taller, so he could reach to the top of the wall. When we were done with about over half of the walls, my room isn't just a square, so there are more then four walls, I suggested on getting some snacks. I brought up some washed strawberries with chocolate syrup to dip them in.

"You're like, obsessed with strawberries." Axel was teasing me, yet again.

"I am not," I pouted. It was just coincidence that I had strawberries again.

We started to eat them, and it was really hard for me to keep the chocolate from getting on my face instead of my in my mouth. When the strawberries were finished, Axel started to just eat the melted chocolate.

"You're gonna get fat you know,"

"I grow up, not out. I've been trying to gain ten pounds for almost two years, it just doesn't seem to work" Axel laughed, I looked at him confused, I didn't get how what he said was funny. He got up and walked towards my, bending down, he ran his thumb along my bottom lip. I felt my face get a little bit warm, and I knew he could see my blush. He brought his thumb up to his mouth and licked the chocolate off of it. I quickly turned to the side and crossed my arms,

"Then you'll get acne," I just needed to get some air and space from Axel, I would be fine in a minute.

"Please, those things have never been on my face. The chocolate will just help my immune system, the rest will leave my body."

"Okay," I said. It was one of those okays that are just said to agree with the one person, so that they have it their way.

I went over and picked up the snack's garbage and went to go throw it away.

We worked on the rest of the room for a while. When we got done, Axel said that we had to wait for the paint to dry before we could put the stripes on. He said that we probably wouldn't be doing that until tomorrow. We decided to go over to Axel's house to do something. When we walked into the door, a black cat and a tabby cat ran up to me. I bent down and started to pet them.

"Aww, I didn't know you had cats." Axel bent down to pet them too.

"Yea, the black cat is named Panther, and the tabby cat is named Chloe."

"Man, you're so lucky, I always wanted a cat, but I could never have one, Sora was horribly allergic to them."

"Yea, I wanted to get Panther, and Reno wanted to get Chloe, so we just got both. I named Chloe and Reno named Panther."

I picked up Panther and said, "Let's get some food," Axel just laughed.

We started to paint again on Saturday. Axel marked were we would be painting lines with more painter's tape. On the roof, we had all the stripes criss-cross so that it looked like plaid. Once we were done painting, we decided to go to the train station. We weren't actually going to go on the train, but the train station had a clock tower. No one really with up there, but I liked it there. We bought some popsicles.

"You know, I always thought you'd be someone who is afraid of heights." Axel commented as he sat down. We both had our feet dangling over the edge.

"I am, I just don't really feel scared up here. It even feels pretty familiar,"

"Yeah, I know what you mean." We started to eat our popsicles.

"Do you know why a sunset is red?" Axel asked, I started to look at the sky and noticed the sun started to set.

"No, why?" I asked.

"Light is made up of many colors, but of all the colors, red travels the farthest."

"Okay, I'll be sure to put that on my description." We laughed.

Sunday came, and when we were sure the wall was dry, we started to move my stuff back into my room. After we got that done, we started to put up some band posters that I never got around to putting up.

When I went to sleep, I had another dream about Axel. We were fighting, and when I won, Axel said "Let's meet again, in the next life," I never really understood these dreams. I was fighting with a giant key and Axel had these two spiky circles. Sometimes, I thought I was crazy or something when I woke up from dreams like those.

I decided to stop thinking about the dream and just get ready for school. Riku came to pick Sora up for school, and I still wasn't so sure if I was okay with Riku or not, he seemed suspicious, but when he looked at Sora, his eyes started to fill with real love, and he seemed so sincere. In second period, we have started to learn about idioms and everything like that. The teacher was already irritated, everyone kept talking and wasn't paying attention, but this one kid, Tidus, was swinging his legs around, and his shoe flung off. It ended up hitting the teacher, which made it pretty funny, but that only made the teacher more mad. We ended up getting homework, which I wasn't too happy about.

Then, after fourth period, Axel and I were just walking down the hall. When I looked ahead, I saw Seifer pinning Sora to the wall. I could tell this wasn't going to be anything good. I could even hear him from here.

"Hey, you gay fag, are you gonna beg me to fuck you? Come on, admit it, you're just some whore. What would you do if I beat you up? This world doesn't need anymore gay fags." I could tell Seifer was getting ready to punch Sora, and I couldn't let that happen. What would I think of myself when I saw my little brother get beaten up. I took off running, as fast as my legs could possibly go. Luckily, I did get there in time, but then I felt the full forced of Seifer's punch collided with my stomach. The air got knocked out of me, and it kind of felt like I was going to throw up, but I also knew I wasn't because the last time I ate was yesterday's dinner. I put my arms around my stomach, my natural instinct to protect it and looked up at Seifer. A second later my head whipped to the left, and it probably could've felt like I could've broken my neck, but I was too worried about the pain on my face. I could tell it was going to leave a bad bruise on my check bone. My teeth even made my mouth start to bleed. My lip got cut too, probably from me biting on it when I got hit in the stomach. My vision started to go black, and I started to wonder if Seifer coldcocked me. Then, I saw a flash of red, and when my sight started to clear up, I saw that Axel was literally beating Seifer to an inch of his life. It didn't even look like the kind, easy-going Axel that I knew. It kind of scared me, but not enough that I would want to stay away from Axel. I started to wonder how badly we would get punished. I bet Seifer would get suspended, and Axel and I might get sent to ISR. After all, Axel was only performing self defense. Axel stopped after only a couple of hits, he probably didn't want to get suspended. He walked over to me and Sora.

"Sora, go get the nurse and principal Xemnas," Sora looked a bit shaken up after seeing everything that happened.

"Uh…sure," Sora ran off. I was just glad that he was okay. I started to cough pretty bad. Some of the blood from my cheek came out, but it was probably nothing that serious.

"Okay, Roxas Sora is going to get the nurse. Everything is going to be okay." Axel soothed. I seemed to be shaking. It was kind of weird, I wasn't even cold.

"It's alright, I'm right here, I won't let anyone else hurt you." I looked up at him and he wiped the blood off of my lower lip. "I promise."

**Author's Note: **I really hope this makes up for me being late. It's pretty short, but I think it might have the most Akuroku out of all my other chapters, and it's starting up the problem for a big piece of the story. Anyways, I hope you like it and please review! It can be one word, like "Good!" or "Bad!" or even "Continue!" I read every review no matter what.


	7. Familiar Picture

**Disclaimer: **Guys, I don't own KH or any of it's characters. How many times do I have to repeat myself?

**Warning:** Yaoi, duh. Also, I know I haven't said this in my other chapters, but there is swearing. Not that much, but there is. I did rate this as M but that is just so I don't get yelled at for rating it too low.

**Author's Note: **Okay, for all of my readers who don't visit my profile, I have some news to make. I will no longer be updating everyday. Now, don't get me wrong, I still will update as soon as possible, but once a day is just getting way too hard. I want these chapters to be good, and I have school all day, so it doesn't give me much time to write up a chapter and then type and post it. I'm sorry if you guys are disappointed, but I do have somewhat of a life and need some time to myself. I hope you understand and please review.

Chapter 7 - Familiar Picture

After the whole mess with Seifer, I got sent to the nurse's office. It was a bit worse then it seemed, because apparently, when Seifer punched my face, my head slammed into the wall. They didn't think I had a concussion, but they had to do a couple of tests for those sort of things. I hated the nurse's office. The nurse was nice and all, but just the office looked like a hospital room. I even smelled like one.

After a million tests for a possible concussion, the nurse started to clean off the cut on my lip. She also gave me some food, but I just ended up throwing it up. She told me that I was probably in a state of shock from getting hit and all that stuff.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"It's two-thirty," she said.

Well, at least school was almost over. But then I realized, that I must've gotten hit at around 11:00, how was it 2:30?

"How is it 2:30? Didn't I get into that fight at 11:00?" I asked confused.

"Well, you did pass out for about three hours." I didn't even know I passed out, "Yeah, the kid who brought you in, I think his name was Alex or something, he was almost terrified you had a concussion and went into a coma or something like that. We had to get three teachers and the principal to make sure he got back to his classes." So, Axel was worried. It made me a little bit happy, at least someone cared if I went into a coma or not. I even got this weird feeling in my stomach.

"So, how much trouble are we in?" I asked, I did kind of want to know what was going to happen to us now.

"Well, after today you and Axel are going to be in ISR for the week, and Seifer is going to be suspended for the rest of the week. We have already called your dad and he said he would pick you up when you woke up and was feeling better." my face went blank. Cloud wasn't my dad, and I didn't really like it when people called him my father. My _real _dad died in the prison he got sent to.

I tried to not think about it too much, I didn't want the nurse to think that I needed therapy or anything, it would just make things worse.

The bell rang, telling the students that school was over for the day. I was sitting on the nurse room's bed, waiting for Cloud to come in to pick me up. While I was waiting, I saw Axel rush in. He had come from a class across the building, and yet got here so fast. I smiled at him, my silent greeting. His face just lit up with happiness.

"Roxas! You're okay! When did you wake up? Is your head okay? D'you want me to help you walk home? Want any food-"

"Axel, stop with the questions, I'm only one person."

"Sorry," he said sheepishly.

"I woke up around two o'clock. And yeah, my head's fine. They said that I didn't have a concussion. Cloud is going to drive me home, but I'm sure you can come if you wanna. And I don't want any food, I'll probably just puke it back up."

Cloud came walking into the room. He had a worried look on his face.

"Roxas, are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just wanna go home." He nodded, understanding my request.

"Come on, let's go, Axel, you coming?"

When we got to my house, Axel got my a cup of water and turn on the TV that was in my room. We sort of just sat there, talking. Nothing specific really, it could be from the first time Axel did a flip on a trampoline, or how I didn't like seagulls. We even played stupid games like Rock Paper Scissors, and had some thumb wrestles. It was pretty nice to be honest, no big problems, no usage of a large amount of energy, things started to calm down. I got a few calls from school, asking if I was okay and everything. Then, Sora came in.

"Hey, Roxas," He said, it was kind of like a whisper, like he was scared to talk to me or something.

"Hey Sora, are you doing okay?" I asked, it must have been a bit hard for him to see everything that had happened today.

"Am I okay? Can you think of yourself for once? You almost got a concussion!" his eyes started to water, and I knew he was about to cry. I was kind of shocked. I never really noticed how upset this whole thing made him, I started to feel bad.

"Sora, come here," I patted the side of the bed that Axel wasn't sitting on. He walked over, and sat down. A few tears started to role down his cheeks. I wiped them away.

"Sora, I'm going to be okay, I won't leave you or Namine alone, okay?"

"But-" Sora started.

"I won't let anything keep me away from you. Even if I did go into a coma, I would wake up, I could never just let you and Namine stay here all alone, I would never do that. Remember my promise?" I smiled at him. He seemed to be looking better. I was pretty happy that he started to feel better.

"Yeah, and I won't let anything happen to lil' Roxy," Axel chimed in. I looked over at him and smiled, even he was trying to make Sora feel better.

"Stop calling me Roxy, my name is Roxas," I joked. Even Sora started to smile some more.

"Well, is there anything I can get for you Roxas?"

"Yes," I said smiling, "Get me a million dollars and a blue sports car,"

"How am I supposed to do that?" Sora freaked out.

"I don't know, win the lottery, invent something, I'm sure you can figure something out," I could tell that Sora was back to his normal self now.

"I'm not doing that," Sora said, he started to walk out of my room.

"So, what's going to happen now?" I asked Axel. He just shrugged. I knew Seifer's gang wasn't going to be too happy about him getting suspended. Of course, they didn't really act without their leader, but he'll be pissed off when he gets back to school next week. I didn't want to deal with him either.

"We could always just run away this weekend." Axel joked.

"Oh please, I ain't gonna run away and leave Sora to possibly get beat up or someone to rape Namine," Axel gave me a weird look.

"Who said anything about raping Namine?"

"Who knows? You could always come back here and do it. Anyone at that school could." I said, crossing my arms.

"Oh please, I'm not going to be raping your sister, trust me," Axel mimicked me by crossing his arms too, "Besides, even if I were to do something like that, you can't call it rape if she liked it." I started to laugh.

"Oh please, I don't think that anyone would like to loose their virginity to you,"

I saw that Axel's pride had been hurt a bit, but then he smiled and raised his eyebrow, "Oh Roxas, I didn't know you thought about me making love with someone. I didn't even know you swung that way."

"I didn't- I don't think of you doing stuff like that!" I said, my face growing warm, "And I _don't _swing that way,"

"Hey, don't be a homophobe, Roxas, it's not nice,"

"What? I am _not _a homophobe! I'm just not gay, that's all."

"Yeah, but you said it as if it would be bad if you were."

"Well I didn't mean to put it that way. Can we just talk about something else now?" I asked, I was pretty tired.

"Wanna watch a movie?" Axel suggested.

"Sure, make it a horror though." I liked horror movies the most.

We decided to watch Rosemary's Baby, which wasn't even scary, but was something to watch. I could feel my eyes drooping closed from exhaustion. I wasn't that interested in the movie, so I thought that it would be fine if I just went to sleep. I turned my head and nuzzled into my pillow a bit, and I was fast asleep. It felt like a second later that I woke up. I saw a small flash and that's what got me to open my eyes up. When I did, it looked like the door closed, but I was still tired, so it could have just been my imagination. I opened my eyes and I noticed there was a weight on top of my head. I saw some red and new that Axel had probably fallen asleep too. I was starting to get used to waking up pretty close to him. I assumed that we were just called and went to the nearest source of heat, which would obviously be another person. I didn't know for sure, but it made enough sense. I shook him awake and then we started to watch another horror movie. We started to watch Return of the Living Dead.

The next week, we were stuck in ISR. It was really boring. In ISR, all you do is get work that the teachers send down to you. Then, you work on it as though it's homework in a study hall class. We weren't allowed to talk, but when the teacher went to get our work, Axel and me would talk. It was usually about the school work. Axel didn't understand the new math lesson, and I didn't know what certain things were called in Science. Something I wasn't happy about was that, on top of the work we have to do in ISR, I had to also do the work from yesterday that I missed. I was okay about getting extra time on my paper in English, I really liked to write, but I still had to do French, Music, History, and we had to do a packet about a hockey player for gym class so that we could make up the points that we missed for not being there. It wasn't that bad. The ISR teacher, Cid, didn't really care about what we did. Axel told him that we had to work together on a lot of the subjects. I think Cid knew that he was lying, and I think Axel knew too, but we were the only kids there, so he probably just let it slide. I didn't like the lunch that we got. Usually, there are three different lines we could choose from. The first line had the food that was on the school's menu. The second was other food like pizza, hamburgers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and stuff like that. The third line was a buffet. It was usually for salads, but you could make a lot of meals by it. When you are in ISR, you get the food from the first lunch line, which I never really got. I didn't like the food there, I would usually just get the buffet or a pizza or something. I sat up and ate it, but I still didn't like it. Either way though, ISR wasn't as bad as most of my friends told me it would be. They kept texting me on my walk to school saying about how they felt so bad I was going there or that it was the worst place you could be at school. When school was over, I still waited for Sora and Namine so that I could walk home with them.

"Roxas!" I could hear both Namine and Sora call at the same time. Then, I was bombarded with hugs from them.

"Roxas! You're still alive! People kept saying how you wouldn't last an hour in there. I was so scared that I would never see you again!"

"Sora, people were just joking around. You need to start learning when people are using sarcasm. And ISR isn't even that bad. Cid was watching us and since Axel and I were the only two there, he just let us talk." I explained to him.

"Roxas, could we wait until Kairi comes? She's coming over today," Namine asked.

"Yeah sure,"

Axel was still leaning on the wall, waiting for me to get Sora and Namine to come. When we walked home, people from the neighborhood or driving down the road always thought we were some gang. I were clothes that get people to call me 'emo', Sora, Axel and my hair look unrealistic. Sora wore pretty baggy pants with a chain and then a tight shirt. Axel wore pretty dark clothes too. Today, his shirt said, 'I just WON the game!' It made everyone he walked by loose the game, which got them mad, which made him laugh. Plus, Axel had tattoos on his face, which didn't help that gang look we have going on right now. Namine and Kairi looked pretty normal, but most people just consider them whores for hanging around with so many guys.

"So, I have a question," Axel started, "Why are you and Sora's hair color different?" I was actually wondering when he was finally going to ask that,

"Well, in seventh grade, when Roxas first took chemistry, he messed up the chemicals, and got exposed to this radiation that changed his hair color. He was horrible in chemistry." Sora laughed.

"I am not!" I defended, "The teacher just never taught me correctly," I crossed my arms, and pouted. When we got back to the house, Zexion and Demyx were already there. Demyx ran up to us, saying hi to each of us. Then, when he went over to Namine, he asked her what she was drawing. She showed him with a bit reluctance, she probably didn't want to show him at all, but didn't want to hurt his feelings.

"Whoa! This is so cool!" then, everyone gathered around Demyx to look at the picture. It was drawn really well, but the picture was weird. Me, Axel, Zexion, And Demyx all had these black trench coats on. Sora had puffy pants and big shoes, his clothes were all black, blue, red, and yellow. Kairi had a pink dress with a white spaghetti strap underneath and a black belt with a pouch and purple shoes. Riku also had a black trench coat, but he had a black thing tied around his eyes. Axel had the same spiky circles, me and Sora had that giant key, Riku and Kairi had things varied like the keys me and Sora had, Demyx had a sitar, Zexion had a book, and Namine had her sketch pad. The dreams that I had all matched this perfectly. I didn't get what was going on. I mean, sure, Namine was just being creative, but what was the chance that these were the same way we all looked in my dreams.

"Wait, why are me and Sora holding a big key?" I asked, I was hoping she might know something about it, then I might be able to know what it is.

"I'm calling it a key blade," She started, that's what I called it in one of my dreams, "it's a weapon that only some people can use."

"Why are some of us in a black trench coat, and then others not?" Zexion asked. It almost sounded like he knew the answer, but wanted all of us to hear it.

"Well, it's a coat that allows you guys to travel through these special portals, but not get attacked. It just keeps you hidden." I started to get a really bad headache.

"I'll be right back," I said. I slipped away from the group huddling around Namine's picture. I went into the kitchen and got an Aspirin. My vision started to go darker, and I got a little dizzy, I thought it would be best if I just went and sat down or something. I sat down at the kitchen table and put my head down, using my arms as a makeshift pillow.

"Hey, are you feeling alright? You didn't look too good when you left," Axel came into the kitchen.

"I just have a headache, that's all," I mumbled into my arms.

"Did you take any medicine for it?" Axel asked.

"Yeah, it should kick in soon."

"Do you want me to get you anything? A drink or something?" he asked.

"No, I have math homework to do," I tried to get up without my head hurting too much. It didn't work too well and I still got dizzy. When I took my first step, I started to fall, but Axel caught me by my shoulders.

"Are you sure you're okay? I think you should get some rest," Axel said.

"No, I have to do my school work," I said, determined to get done with it.

He let go of me, and I took a couple more steps, only to start to fall again.

"Okay, you can't even walk, you are going to sleep," Axel said as he caught me. He held onto me as we both walked upstairs, my balance not coming back. When I got into my bed and got situated, I told Axel "I'll only sleep for a little bit, wake me up in two hours, max," I commanded sternly, or at least tried to. My head hurt so bad it hurt to talk in the first place.

"Okay, just get some sleep," Axel said. I closed my eyes and I was out like the light.

**Author's Notes:** Okay guys! I think this is my longest chapter yet! It took hours to type up. I only type about 75 words per minute, but my fingers get tired a lot. Also, when Axel and Roxas fell asleep watching that movie, Roxas laid his head on Axel's shoulder and Axel laid his head on Roxas's head. When me and my sister were younger, and we were riding on a plane, we slept like this all the time, it was a really comfortable position for me because I was Roxas and my older sister was Axel. Anyways, I hope this was a good chapter and please review! It makes me happy when you do!


	8. A Dreaded Day

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Kingdom Hearts! I wish I did though, but I don't.

**Warning: **Yaoi…soon. And language I guess, there is some, but not really that much

**Author's Note: **Okay guys, you can shoot me. I wanted to get this chapter done yesterday or the day before, but I just couldn't. I have nine school projects. Its this inner disciplinary project for my school. It sucks. But I do get to go to the zoo…fun. Oh! And I have chorus try-outs tomorrow…that'll be fun. My allergies are starting to come back, I hate sneezing, whoever invented it was stupid. Yeah, and I had writers block until this morning, I knew what I wanted to do for the chapter, but I didn't know what to do for the beginning part…so yeah, those are my pathetic excuses. Please, have a good time reading!

Chapter 8 - A Dreaded Day

I woke up the next day for school. I looked over at my calendar and noticed it was September 14th. I saw that it was thirteen days away from a dreaded day. I looked away, trying not to think about it.

"Roxas! Come on! You're going to be late again!" Sora called, and I rolled my eyes. I ran down the stairs and greeted Namine, who was reading a magazine. Probably one that she got from Marluxia. The doorbell rang, and I went over to answer it. It was Riku.

"Sora! Your boyfriend's here to pick you up!" I yelled loudly and snickered.

"Roxas! Would you shut up! Cloud still doesn't know yet!" Sora came running down the stairs with a blush layering his cheeks. I left them, leaving them to their own business, and went to make some warm tea. I poured it in a cup, grabbed my book bag, and headed out the door, saying goodbye to Namine on my way out. I saw Axel walking ahead.

"Hey, Axel, wait up!" I called. He turned around and waited for me to walk up to him.

"Hey, you're late, again." Axel complained.

"When am I not late?" I sighed, irritated. It seems like everyone has to comment on how late I have been lately. Namine hasn't even left the house yet!

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a stick of gum.

"Gum?" I asked. Axel took a piece without replying.

We were late to school. We also got into trouble because we couldn't sign into ISR on time. I started to do my history, since all I had was a worksheet and all of the answers were in the book.

"Axel, spit out your gum," Axel looked up from his work.

"But, why? Haven't you heard about that study that chewing gum helps many students do better on schoolwork because it relieves stress?" Axel replied.

"I don't care. I don't want you putting it under the desk, now spit it out." Axel got up and spit it out. I wish Cid was here, he was so much nicer.

Axel passed me a note a little bit later.

_Wow, there's already two pieces of gum under my desk. Ew, I just touched it and it was all gooey. Well, that's probably because of the heat, but still, that's nasty._

I rolled my eyes. I didn't really care about that. I replied.

_Dude, I don't care. I don't want to know about that._

I looked back at the teacher before I tossed the note to him. He looked like he was about to fall asleep. Axel passed me the note back.

_Roxy~ I think that you should start to care more. It hurts my feelings when you say that. Anyways, do you know what the answer is for x²-23x-50? _I replied,

_For the millionth time, stop calling me Roxy! And the work is -50/-25__½__2 -23 -23] is the work, and the answer is (x-25)(x+2) How did you get into a math homeroom if you suck at math? _

Principal Xemnas came in, and Axel hid the note in his shoe before Principal Xemnas could see it. He glared at both of us, and Axel smiled at him, as if he was happy to see him.

"Good morning, Xemnas!" Axel greeted cheerfully.

"It's _Principal _Xemnas, and you are _not _to be talking." Axel looked disheartened.

He asked the ISR teacher to come to the hall to talk to him, before he left he said, "You two better behave," I just continued to do my work.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. It was just like a normal school day. After school, I waited for Sora and Namine. When I saw Sora and Riku, I walked over to them.

"Hey, have you guys seen Namine?" I asked.

"She's going to Larxene's house," Sora said with a smile on his face. I smiled too. Last year, some idiot spread a rumor about Namine being pregnant because she was some whore, and no one really talked to her. I guess the whole school didn't hear it. I was happy that she finally found someone to hang out with. Plus, it was someone other than Kairi, who is not only like a childhood friend to her, but she's starting to develop a crush on Sora, and I know that if she likes him enough, she'll try to break Sora and Riku up, and I don't want her to do that.

"Roxas, come on, hurry up! I wanna get home and get something to eat." I just about had a heart attack. Axel came up behind me, and I didn't even take notice.

"Don't do that!" I said hitting him on the arm.

"Why are you so violent to me, Rox?" he asked, rubbing his arm, faking pain.

"Maybe if you called me by my name, I wouldn't hit you so much," I said, crossing my arms. Sora and Riku started to laugh. They started to do this a lot now.

When we got home, I got out a sea-salt ice cream. I turned around and saw Axel, who snatched the ice cream out of my hand.

"Hey! Give it back. I though you said you were going to go to _your _house and get something to eat," I said, snatching my ice cream back.

"This is like my second home now," Axel said, going to the freezer to pull out another sea-salt ice cream.

We went to the living room, which had a corner sofa, a coffee table and a purple chair*. Sora, Riku, and Zexion were sitting on one side of sofa. Demyx was sitting on the floor, near the coffee table, writing on sheet music. Xigbar was sitting on the purple chair. I took a seat on the sofa, Axel sat next to me. We were all just hanging out.

"What should I be for Halloween?" I asked, taking a bite out of my ice cream. Everyone just sat around, thinking.

"You know what we could all do?" Demyx all of a sudden jumped up, startling a lot of the people there.

"What?" Axel asked, smiling, anticipating it to be something ridiculous.

"Okay, we should get, like, a mask with a scary face, and put it at the side of our heads. Then, we should just alter our clothes to make us look scary, like add blood and rips and stuff. You know?" Everyone seemed to consider it.

"It would be better then just getting some lame costume," Riku commented.

"Marluxia could probably sew some stuff together too," Xigbar added.

"Wow Demyx, I'm impressed, that was actually a really good idea," I said.

"I know! Since, we aren't that great at designing stuff, but Roxas is, how about we let him make all the costumes?" Sora suggested.

"What? I don't have the time! I-" I got cut off.

"I think that's a great idea," Zexion said. Everyone else agreed.

"Yeah, then you can give it to Marly and he'll sew it together." Demyx said.

"Fine, I'll do the impossible for all of you." I said with a bit of sarcasm in my voice.

"Oh, and you should make one for Namine, Larxene, and Marluxia too." Axel added.

"You're not making my job easier." I said glaring at him.

"You have a little less then a month, I'm sure that's plenty of time," Riku said.

"Yeah, okay fine." I said.

The weeks came and went, without much going on. Before I knew it, it was September 26th. This past week, Sora and Namine kept asking if I was okay, same with Axel. He said that I was quiet, gloomy, and looked depressed. I didn't really notice it, but almost everyone around me did. Cloud and my teachers all gave my worried looks, wanting to know if I was okay.

Sora came into my door, not even bothering to knock, "Hey, you still dressing up tomorrow?" Sora asked.

"Yeah, of course I am, are you and Nami?" I asked.

"Namine is, and I have to wash my pants, you need any darks washed while I'm at it?"

"Yeah, hold on." I got a black dress shirt out that had skinny grey stripes that sort of blended into the black. I also got out a pair of black male skinny jeans. "Could you wash these for me?" I asked.

"Yeah, sure, they'll be ready soon," I went to my closet, and out of a drawer that was built in, I got out a black studded belt, some black bracelets, and my lip ring, nose stud, and eyebrow stud out. I had the side of my lip, nose and eyebrow pierced. In my ear, I had an Auricle piercing, three Helix piercings, and my lobe pierced. I've had most of them since I moved in with Cloud and he signed the guardian's consent form. I usually didn't wear the ones on my face all together, but tomorrow I was going to.

Oh,  
>Your back to me and the hunger returns.<br>I told myself I was done for good.  
>All the memories of all the pictures burned.<br>I see them dancing  
>My heart begins to pound<br>I didn't make a sound  
>They didn't see me coming<br>The lights are left on.  
>The curtains left wide.<br>One scream, it's over.  
>I lay them side by side.<br>Holding each other.  
>I'll be there in the morning with a smile on my face.<br>I'll be there in the morning to start it all again.  
>Boy you caught me red handed.<br>You've got no fucking clue what you just got yourself into.  
>Panic runs down your leg-<p>

"Roxas! Wake up already, you can't sleep forever!" Sora called. I didn't want to wake up today. I didn't want to go to school today either. I got up anyways, knowing today was going to be a big day.

The day my beloved mother died.

Sora, Namine, and I always dressed in black today. I put in all my piercings, I put on my black clothes, and got liquid eyeliner.

"Sora, Namine, come here," I called. They came. Sora was wearing clothes similar to mine, but no chain or belt. Sora had his lobs pierced and he had a surface piercing on his neck, in-between his collar bone. He unbuttoned his shirt one button to show it best. He also had spider bites on his lower lip. Namine just had a Madonna. I went up to Sora, grabbed his chin, and tilted his face up. Under his left eye, on the outer corner, I drew a small teardrop. I did the same for Namine. She had a black short sleeved dress with an elegant collar and buttoned to the waist, which had a belt*. She also had black four inch ankle boots. I drew a tear drop on my eye, and I was ready for school.

I walked outside, and saw Axel. He walked over to me, looking at my clothes.

"Hey Roxy good morning." He said as cheerful as ever.

"Hey," was all I said.

"Hey Roxas, I know you're not emo and all, but…you're kind of projecting that image. Why you wearing that?" Axel asked.

"Roxas!" Sora came running towards me. "You forgot your English folder."

"Oh, thanks Sora." Axel looked him over. We heard Namine walk out, she had her purse-like-book bag, a few notebooks and a cup of coffee. Axel looked her over too.

"Dude, why are all you wearing black? Did I miss a holiday or something?"

Sora looked at me, asking if it was okay to tell Axel.

"Uh…someone important has left the three of us on this day, and we do this as a sort of tradition." I said, trying to keep as much hidden as I could.

"Who?" Axel asked. I didn't really want to answer the question, so I looked around for a distraction. I saw Riku coming this way.

"Oh, hey Riku! Just perfect timing, I got done with your costume the other day."

After that, Axel seemed to drop the subject for the most part. Seifer started to call Sora, Nami, and me emo again, but nothing really new happened. Larxene liked the teardrops on our faces, and just about all my teachers gave me questioning looks about my choice of clothing.

After school, I snuck through the crowd, trying to avoid Axel. I was glad I didn't have my last class with him. I snuck off successfully to Twilight Town Graveyard. It was where my mother was buried. As I entered the building, I bought some lilies. They were my mom's favorite. She loved them because they were poisonous, but so pretty. I also bought a single red rose and put it in the center of the Lily bouquet. I went over to her grave, there were no other flowers there. I was the only one who came now, and the flowers from last year probably blew away. I set the flowers down gently.

"I miss you, mom." I whispered as a tear rolled down my cheek. It started to drip some rain. I just stood there, remembering all the things that she did for me. How she would kiss my cuts and bruises, how she would put notes in my lunchbox when I was really little. How she would tuck me in at night and read the same book full of millions of stories, every night, no matter how late it was. How she would lay out my clothes for me for school. Tears started to pour out of my eyes. I didn't sob, I just cried.

I was the one who saw her die. Sora and Namine don't know though. We were driving to the toy store, I had gotten straight As for the first time and she wanted to get me something. The neighbor was watching Sora and Namine. When we were driving home, there were terrible storms. On the radio, three houses were struck with lightning in the area. It was pouring so hard that no driver could possibly see, that I couldn't even blame the driver for crashing right into us from driving on the wrong side of the road. Obviously, we crashed. The lid that covered the engine bent back and even broke through the windshield. It should've hit me, but instead my mother got in front of me. The metal went straight through her heart, and countless pieces of glass punctured her. She told me that she loved me, and died right in front of me. I saw the light leave her eyes and her body go limp. I screamed so loudly that I lost my voice. I didn't sleep well for a long time, and sometimes I still can't sleep. Just thinking of this day, years ago, haunts me. I made sure Sora and Namine didn't know we were even in a car crash. I told them she had a heart attack when she went to the restroom at the toy store.

By now I was knelling, just looking at her grave, wishing I could see her again. Have her warm arms embrace just once. But, I knew it would never happen. She was gone, and I was the cause of it. If I hadn't been getting straight As. If I hadn't wanted a stupid toy, one that I haven't even opened yet. It was sitting on my shelf, still in it's box. It was just this paint ball gun. I try not to even look at it. I thought about throwing it away, so it would stop reminding me, but I could never bring myself to do it. I noticed that the rain picked up and was pouring. I was shivering, so it was probably pouring for a while now.

I heard someone walking, but I assumed someone else was visiting a grave. I looked over, and I saw Axel. He looked at my tear-stained face and ran towards me.

"Roxas! I was looking everywhere for you! What are you doing here? And in this weather?" Another tear rolled down my face, and Axel realized that it wasn't the rain.

"Rox…" he kneeled down, and slowly wrapped his arms around me. His fingers weaved through my hair, and I gripped his shirt until my knuckles turned white. I just let go. I bawled into his chest. Crying my eyes out. My voice was muffled from being buried in his chest. I cried and cried, even when my throat was stinging, I still cried. The last time I cried was the day she actually died. Axel just kept saying comforting words, rubbing small circles on my back. I felt him look at the grave, which showed that she was my mom, it said that she was a mother of three and had our names on it. Axel only hugged me tighter, listening as I cried my eyes out. After a while, I couldn't even cry anymore.

"Now, will you tell me what you're doing out here?" Axel asked in a soft voice.

"T-today was the day o-of my mother's death. We were in a car crash…a-and that's when s-she…s-she," I couldn't get myself to say it, I was too upset. I usually just dropped off some flowers and left as fast as I could, trying not to think about it too much, but I stayed too long, thinking about my mom. All of my hurt emotions were locked away and ignored, until now.

"Oh Rox, I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were so upset about this," Axel said, bringing me towards him again. I was freezing, and couldn't even feel my hands, but Axel was so warm, like a warm cup of tea in the winter.

"Man, you're shivering violently. Come on, we need to get you somewhere warm before you catch a cold." He took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The rain was still pouring, and it was hard to see four feet in front of us.

I was really tired. I just wanted to go home and sleep. Sleep and just never wake up, having beautiful dreams and no more nightmares.

"I want to go home," I told Axel, sniffing my nose.

"Okay, that's were we are going," Axel said reassuringly.

We got home soon enough, but I was at the end of my rope. It felt like my legs were going to give out soon.

"Man what did you guys do? Jump in a lake? You're soaked," Sora commented.

We went to my room, and while I got into dry clothes, Axel went and borrowed more of Xigbar's clothes. He also took my wet clothes and hung them up in the bathroom over the bathtub so that they could dry. We both collapsed onto my bed, and I turned toward Axel, snuggling into his warm chest, and falling asleep.

**Author's Note: **Guys I'm sorry. I typed this up Thursday, but there was this huge thunderstorm, and my internet was down. I couldn't upload until today. Yeah, it was horrible, my neighbor's house got struck with lightning and was on fire. I don't know that much what happened, but I hope they're okay. ANYWAYS I don't know if I like this chapter or not. It's really sad, but I was in a depressed mood today anyways, though I'm not sure why. Oh, and that note that Axel and Roxas passed at school, yeah that's what me and my friend were talking about today in Spanish class. She said what Axel said, and I said what Roxas said. I just added the math problem. Anyways, I hope that you guys like it and please review. I wanted to say thanks for the reviews I already have, but I'm greedy, and want more, ha-ha. Anyways Review!

Oh and guys, the little *s that are by some of the descriptions, well on my profile I'm going to put up the links to the pictures that I based these places/clothes off of. If you want to see it, just go to my profile. And if the picture doesn't show up, tell me and I'll send it to you.


	9. Halloween Costumes and Counseling?

_**Disclaimer: **__I don't own Kingdom Hearts, stop rubbing it in my face already._

_**Warning: **__Yaoi…soon! I promise. And swearing._

_**Author's Note: **__Hey guys! God, I'm so busy, I wish I had more time to write. I kind if left the last chapter on a sad note. But I guess everyone has sad moments in their life, right? Anyways, enjoy reading and please review!_

_Chapter 9 - Halloween Costumes and Counseling?_

_I woke up to the home phone ringing. I tried to get up to get it, my head started pounding. It felt like it was going to explode. I just plopped back down onto the bed and decided that the phone could just go to voicemail. I looked over at Axel, who was still sleeping. He actually looked a lot younger sleeping, vulnerable even. When I saw his eyes twitching slightly, I could tell he was dreaming. I started to wonder what Axel would dream about, and noticed I was staring at him. I looked away, and draped my arm over my eyes, trying to block out the light from my window. I dreaded mornings more then anything. I looked over at the clock to see what time it is. My eyes turned to saucers. It was 10:34! _

"_Axel!" I started to shake him a bit, "Axel, wake up, we're late for school," All of a sudden, I went into a fit of coughing. It started to make my head pound harder, and my nose felt stuffy. I took out my cell phone and put on this ring tone of a girl screaming bloody murder. I put it to next to Axel's ears, and turned it on._

"_Aah!" Axel sat straight up, obviously startled by the way I woke him up._

"_What the hell was that for?" Axel asked, rubbing his eyes. _

"_It's 10:40, we're late for school," He looked over at me._

"_We might as well skip, it'd be pointless to go now," He looked at me a bit more, and I started to feel a bit self-conscious._

"_I guess…" I started to cough more, but not as bad as before._

"_Want some water?" Axel asked._

"_I can get some myself," I said, getting up and trying to ignore the pounding in my head. I tried to go slow, not to hurt my head too much. But, when I actually stood up, I stumbled a little bit._

"_You sure you're okay?" Axel asked. He walked towards me, and put the back of his hand on my forehead, cheek, and then my neck._

"_Yeah, I'm fine, what are you doing?" I said, trying to wave off his hands._

"_You're burning up, go and lay down, I'll get you some water. He turned me around and guided me back to the bed and made sure I laid down. The pounding in my head started to die down a bit, and I sighed. I didn't need to get sick. I have a presentation in science tomorrow, and if I'm still sick, I never know if I'll be able to even make up the work. Axel came back with a glass of water and a thermometer and put it in my mouth._

"_Keep that under your tongue for a minute," he said. I rolled my eyes._

"_I know how to hold a thermometer in my mouth," it didn't come out very clear, but I think Axel understood what I was saying._

"_If you brought an umbrella with you yesterday, you wouldn't be this sick," Axel said with an irritated tone, but I could hear something else in his voice._

"_How was I supposed to know that it was going to pour? Besides…I didn't even plan to be there all that long," I said, quieter now. Axel came up to me and pulled the thermometer out of my mouth._

_Looking down at it, he said, "Yeah, there's no way you're going to school today. You have a temperature of 102.4" I groaned. I didn't like being sick, I didn't care if I got out of school, I didn't feel good while I was sick and I have so much work to make up. _

"_I'll be back in a second," Axel continued, walking out of the door. I got my phone out of my pajama's pocket, and looked at my messages._

_Message from: Sora  
><em>_Were are you? Are you skipping school today?_

_Message from: Namine  
><em>_Are you ok? Why didn't you come to school today?_

_Message from: Hayner  
><em>_How can you be late to school every day?_

_Message from: Demyx  
><em>_Were are you & Axel? _

_I sent a message to them that I was sick, and tossed my phone to the other side of the bed. Axel game back in with a wet wash cloth and something small in his hand._

"_Here, take these," he handed me two pills, "It's to help you get better. The box said that I was for headaches, coughing, running noses, and sore throats." I took both pills and swallowed them down with my water. I laid back down and Axel placed the wet cloth onto my forehead, brushing my bangs back first._

"_Thanks," I mumbled. Axel just came back over and laid next to me._

"_Sure, now go to sleep, you'll get better faster," and with that, he closed his eyes. I closed my eyes too, attempting to rest. Before I knew it, I was dreaming._

_I woke up from someone shaking me gently, calling out my name._

"_Roxas, wake up you can't sleep forever," I opened my eyes up, only to be greeted by fire red hair and shining green eyes._

"_So, Sleeping Beauty has finally woken?" Axel asked with a smile on his face._

_I hit him in the arm, "Oh shut up, I'm not a morning person,"_

"_It's past noon, you can't be that tired." I stretched my arms out, and Axel placed a tray with chicken noodle soup onto my lap, along with a cup of water and two more pills._

"_Didn't I just take these?" I asked, holding the pills._

"_Yeah, hours ago, medicine doesn't last forever," I took them and gulped down about half of my glass of water. I picked up the bowl of soup and a spoon and leaned back, taking a spoonful of soup._

"_Man, I hate soup," I complained._

"_You don't like my cooking?" Axel asked, turning on the TV in my room._

"_No, your cooking is just fine, I just hate soup," I said, eating some more._

"_Who hates soup?" Axel asked, flipping through channels and deciding to stay on MTV._

"_I do," I coughed a little bit again, and it made my head pound some._

"_I have never met one person who hates every kind of soup," _

"_Well, now you have," I started to notice that my voice sounded a little raspy, like I was loosing my voice, and it was probably because of how loud I was yesterday. I continued to eat my soup in silence, and my phone started to ring, telling me I had another text message. I set down my soup and picked it up, Axel leaned over my shoulder, reading my phone._

_Message from: Larxene  
><em>_You and Axel better not have skipped school to do something inappropriate ;D_

_We started to laugh a bit, and I felt my face go a bit warm. She was just joking, but I still blushed. Luckily though, Axel didn't notice because I was sick and my face was already pink from my temperature._

_Message sent: You know you wish you were me_

_We went back to watching TV, bored out of our minds. When I finished my soup, I decided to get some sleep._

"_I'm going to sleep, don't burn down my house," I told Axel._

"_That hurts Rox, you wound my aching heart," Axel said, patting his chest were his heart would be. I chuckled a bit, and tried to go to sleep. _

_When I woke up, it was around 4:30. Axel was still in my room, he was asleep with one of my books in his hands. When I sat up, my head didn't hurt as much as it did this morning. I took the book out of his hands to see which on he was reading. It was called "The house of the Scorpion" It was a decent book. Namine got it for me a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn't bad. He seemed to wake up, and I put the book back down._

"_Oh, you're awake. How're you feeling? Do you need more medicine?" Axel looked at me and put his hand on my head again._

"_No, I'm starting to feel better," He nodded in understanding._

"_Yeah, your temperature seems to have gone down for the most part. I heard the door open, and saw Sora's head peeking through the bit of door that was open._

"_Hey Roxas, how are you doing?" I looked at him and game a soft smile._

"_Better then this morning, but I slept for most of the day," he walked over towards me._

"_Yeah, I came in here after school and I thought you were dead or something, you wouldn't wake up no matter how hard I tried!" Sora said, Riku was coming in too._

"_Yeah, then he started to freak out and I had to point out that you were breathing." Riku said. _

"_Hn," I replied, showing them that I heard them, but didn't have much else to say. I slowly got up._

"_You okay with walking?" Axel said, sitting up, getting ready to get something for me._

"_Yeah, besides, I have to go to the bathroom, you can't do that for me," I joked, walking toward the bathroom across the hall. Yuffie came running by, tackling me to the ground._

"_Roxas! How are you doing?" She yelled to loudly in my ear._

"_I was doing just fine until you tackled me to the floor," I complained, irritated, rubbing the back of my head that came in contact with the floor._

"_Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't know you were still sick!" Yuffie said, scrambling to get off of me and helped me up._

"_It's fine," Her phone started to ring, and, excusing herself, she went into her room, closing the door. I finally made my way into the bathroom. I quickly rinsed off my face, I hadn't taken a shower today and I felt disgusting. After I was done with everything I needed to do in the bathroom, I went down to the kitchen. Cloud was there, eating some Spaghetti Os._

"_Roxas, how are you feeling?" I looked over at him._

"_Better thanks," His appearance seemed to lighten a bit more._

"_Oh, your school called. You and Axel missed a Track and Cross-Country meeting. They said that your homeroom representative would give you the notes on the meeting and all that," _

"_Okay, I'll tell Axel," I got some chocolate pocky out of the cupboard and went back up to my room._

"_Hey, we missed a meet for track and cross country. Our class rep. is going to give us notes on it. Do you want some pocky?" I asked, chewing on a stick that I pulled out. Riku and Sora were still there, and I assumed they were talking with Axel. I offered them a piece, and each took one._

"_I'm bored," Axel said, sucking off the chocolate before he ate the pocky. I tried not to look at him too much._

"_Me too…" Sora said. I decided that I may as well continue to work on everyone's costume. I went to my desk and opened the drawer that had all the paper for the costumes, I got that out along with a pack of 64 colored pencils. I was done with Riku's, Demyx's, Zexion's, and Marluxia's costumes. Marluxia should be sewing them together. I only had to do costumes for Axel, Sora, Xigbar, Larxene, and Namine. Since Sora was here, I started to outline his body shape. I wasn't the best at drawing compared to Axel or Namine, but I was pretty good. When I was younger, I would entertain Namine by teaching her how to draw certain things and it just made me get better through practice. I gave him a jack-o-lantern mask, only one that was a little on the spooky side. I also shaded in his forehead, it gave him a darker look. I gave him bat wings and gloves with sharp claws. I gave him a few other things, but his outfit was mainly black, and only a little bit of red and orange from his mask. _

_For Namine's costume, I gave her a black dress that was ripped off sleeves and ripped off at the bottom. I gave her knee high heeled boots and sharp nails, only more girly compared to Sora's. I also gave her a spiked choker and belt. Her dress's torso section was like a corset and had pale blue lacing. For her mask, I gave her a skull with swirled eyes and a cracked head. Her mask was attached to a headband that girls put in their hair, and the headband had spikes on them. For Xigbar's costume, I kept it's theme to a pirate skeleton. I wanted his eye patch to go with his costume and this was the best way I could. _

_For Larxene's mask, I made it a bolt of lightning with a spooky face, like Sora's mask. For her costume, I gave her a plain white belly shirt. On top of her shirt was a jacket that buttons at the top. It had a collar with stitching on the left arm. The sleeves go to the elbow and wave off and her hands are gloved. She has a stitch from her forehead going down her face and neck and in the middle of her stomach. She has a black skirt with white legging and flat black boots. _

_For Axel's mask, I made it in the same fashion as Larxene's. It was a flame with a spooky face. I also shaded the top of his head. Even though he didn't have bangs like Sora, it would still work because we would walk around at night in the dark and it would look like a better shadow. I gave him fangs like a vampire too. He had a collar that didn't fold down, and on his chest he had a heart with an X in the middle and a mini plus sign at the bottom. He had a low cut sleeveless shirt with suspenders that made an X on his chest. On top of that, he had a sleeveless leather jacket with chains on it. On his left arm, there was a sleeve attached by only a few strings and on his right on he had pieces of the sleeve on his elbow and wrist. He had black pants with red strings wrapped around his right leg and he had boots with buckles down it and added about two to three inches to his height._

_After I was done drawing all of their costumes, I threw the sketch book at the group, in their mid-conversation._

"_What was that for?" Axel asked, picking up the notebook and flipping through, "These are really good."_

"_Make my costume. I'm out of ideas and if I made it would be biased." _

_Axel took the liberty to start drawing, and I was a bit glad because I knew Sora couldn't draw to save his life and I didn't know how well Riku was. He would glance at me every once in a while, and I tried not to notice, but it was almost impossible with his piercing eyes, even if he only looked at me for a couple of seconds. We all started to talk about nothing, and Axel ended up spending the night, along with Riku. _

_That night, I had a dream about Axel and me, on the clock tower again. We were eating sea salt ice cream. He was telling me about how we went there when I got my new name, and how I acted like a zombie at that time. We also talked about friendship, and in my dream, I didn't even know what that was, and even Axel had a hard time actually explaining it to me. I was wondering why I was so clueless about everything, and why Axel was the one explaining this all to me. My dreams kept getting weirder, and it seems as though the more I spend time with Axel, the more often I have these strange dreams. _

_Today was Wednesday, which meant that I had shorter classes and an activity period were I could just sit around and talk to the people in my homeroom. It also meant that I had only two more days of the week left. At lunch, Larxene wasn't there because she was skipping school…again. Demyx also wasn't there because he got a lunch detention for 'excessive talking'. It was so stupid because Demyx has ADHD, and he usually takes pills for it. Today, he forgot to take one, and he was really hyper. Before class started, we were all talking about something funny, and he couldn't stop laughing, so the teacher gave him a lunch detention. It was so stupid because he wasn't even talking and nobody even gives lunch detentions anymore, only the teacher that gave it to them, who is around 60 years old._

_During activity period, Miss Tifa asked to speak to me privately._

"_Hey Roxas, I need to talk to you about something," she said by the time we went into the hallway._

"_Yes, Miss Tifa?" I asked politely._

"_Are you doing okay? Is there something you need to talk about? Anything going on?" She asked, putting a hand on my shoulder, probably trying to show a sign of comfort._

"_Uhm… no, why? Is something wrong?" I asked, acting a bit confused, even though I know why she would ask something like that. The way I dressed yesterday, and she probably thought that I skipped school with Axel yesterday._

"_Well, I don't know, you've just been acting…differently, lately and I wanted to know if anything was wrong. Even though I'm just your teacher, if you have a problem, you can come talk to me, okay?" she said it with an honest sincerity, I knew that I would never come to her if I had a problem. I'd go to Seifer before I went to someone like her._

"_Yes, I know, and thanks." I tried to get out of the conversation as fast as I could. Her hand left my shoulder, a sign I took as her allowing me to go back into the classroom. When I cam back in, I saw Axel drawing in the notebook that I gave him yesterday, which meant that he was probably designing my costume._

"_What was all that about?" Axel asked, not looking up at me, but turning around to my desk and drawing on there instead._

"_She asked me if I was doing okay, she's probably going to send me to the counselor if something else happens." I said, laying my head in my arms on the side of the desk that Axel wasn't using._

"_God, you wear dark clothes, then miss a day, and this school thinks you need counseling? That's messed up." Axel said, erasing a little piece of the picture._

"_Well, if they do send me, I'm not going to bother telling the counselor anything, I'll just pretend that nothing bad has ever happened in my life." I said, closing my eyes. I decided to take a small nap, I knew Axel would wake me up when school ended. _

"_Roxas! School's over, come on…wake up!" I was shaken awake, only to find Axel shaking me awake._

"_Hmm…? Oh, school's over," I said drowsily. I rubbed my eyes and then stretched out of my stiff position._

"_Hey, Roxy, you wanna go get some sea-salt ice cream, and go to the clock tower?" Axel asked. _

"_Uh, yeah, sure, we can go," I said, not realizing how much of an important talk we would be having up there._

_**Author's Note:**__ Done! Finally! Guys, I'm sorry for the lame chapter, I kind of have a writers block. I know what I want to do in the future chapters, I just don't know what to do to lead up to that time. Oh well, I'll figure it out soon enough. Oh! And, I think I put in a cliff hanger, and some fore-shadowing…my reading teacher would be so proud. Anyways, I've gotten done with two of my projects, I feel accomplished that I got both of those, and this chapter typed up. Also, for Larxene's costume, I got it off of a wonderful cosplayer. Her user name on Deviantart is ~One-Sky-One-Destiny and her link will be on my profile. Axel's Halloween costume is also from an awesome cosplayer. Her user name on Deviantart is KellyJane. I will also have her link on my profile. You should see their costumes, they're awesome. Anyways, please review!_


	10. A Visit to the Hospital

**Disclaimer:** Okay, for all of you who still don't get the point, I don't own Kingdom Hearts, or it's characters. I don't know how many more times I'll have to say this to get the point across.

**Warning: **Yaoi guys, I don't know how else to put it.

**Author's Notes:** Oh my God! Chapter ten, I've made a milestone…I think that is what their called? Anyways, this chapter has some action I guess, not really. Really depends on your opinion. Anyways, AkuRoku is coming so soon, I can smell it in the air. I can also smell candy and costume make-up too. Anyways, enjoy reading and please tell me what you think!

Chapter 10 - A Visit to the Hospital

Before we went to the clock tower, Axel and I went to stop at my house to drop our school stuff off. I also went to tell Sora that I was leaving, but I walked in on a heated make-out session. I felt my face go hot from embarrassment, and muttered an apology, trying to get out of there as soon as possible. I came back downstairs, and I saw Axel standing in the hallway with two sea-salt ice creams in his hand.

"Why's your face all red?" He asked, but I think he already knew the answer to his question.

"Riku, and Sora, that's why," I said, slightly irritated that I had to walk in on that. Axel just laughed at my obvious irritation.

"Oh stop pouting, let's go," He grabbed his and my jacket, holding the door open for me as I walked out.

"I don't pout, only little kids pout," I said, crossing my arms.

"Your little, and technically, you're not an adult, so that'd qualify you as a kid. Thus, you pout." He was now walking in front of me, walking backwards so that he could face me from the front.

"I'm not little, I just…haven't had my growth spurt yet, and I'm considered a teenager, not a kid or an adult."

"Yeah, you keep trying for that growth spurt," Axel laughed.

"Oh ha-ha, hilarious. I know I'll be laughing when you fall down on the concrete and crack your head open." I smirked, thinking about that actually happening.

"Oh Rox, that hurts my heart. Don't you care about my well-being?" He asked with a huge smile on my face, my own mirroring his smile.

"Nope, not in the slightest."

"Cold-hearted bastard. No, I take that back, you don't even have a heart." I felt deja vu when he told me that I didn't have a heart, but I just shrugged off the feeling.

"Thanks, nice to know what you think of me," I said, sarcastically of course.

"Since when do you even care what people think of you?" Axel asked.

"Since, like, forever," I said in a girlish voice. We both laughed.

We got into the town square soon enough, and we started to head towards the train station, were the clock tower was. Before we even went into the building, I saw Axel turn around and look at the direction towards the sun.

"Hey Rox, I think we should come back in a couple hours when the sun is setting, that way the sun won't be shining in our face," I turned around and looked at what Axel was looking at. I also realized if we did go to the clock tower right now then the sun would be shining right at us.

"Okay, we can come when the sun is setting. But, why did you want to go there in the first place?" I asked him, tilting my head a little bit.

"Don't know, I just wanted to…that's all." He probably had a reason to actually go there, but even I could tell that he didn't really want to tell me.

"Oh…so, what are we going to do for the next couple hours?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"I don't know, want to get something to eat?" Axel asked, eyeing a restaurant that was across the street.

"Yeah, I guess but lets walk around to see all the restaurants in town, I don't want to go to Eclectic Eats. Let's go somewhere like La Ciudad." Eclectic Eats was a restaurant that was more like a fast food place, but couldn't be considered a fast food restaurant, while La Ciudad was more like a legit restaurant.

"If we're going somewhere expensive, then you're going to be the one paying," Axel said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"It's all about the money with you, and don't you have a job?" I asked, crossing my arms.

"Well, yeah, but I'm cheap…and they keep giving me pay deduction because I 'don't get along with the customers'" He made the mock quotations with his fingers.

"You know, I never actually thought that they gave people that many pay deductions, I thought that they really just fired people." I said, thoughtfully.

"I know, that's what I told my boss, and he just gave me another pay deduction, pretty soon I'm going to be down to minimum wage." I laughed.

Soon enough, we got to La Ciudad. It was pretty crowded, but we only had to wait around ten minutes before we got to sit down. When we sat down, I noticed that there were some people from our school that was already there. I never really talked to that many people at school, but I never really knew that this place was so popular with our age group.

When we got seated, we told our waitress what we would like to drink, and when she left, she started to giggle like an idiot.

"This place seems pretty good, a bunch of people from school are here," Axel commented, doodling on the back of his paper placemat.

"Yeah, I guess. I think I'm just going to get something small, like a fruit salad or something." I didn't want to get anything too big. Sora always gets mad at me when I don't have dinner with him and Namine. He says that a real family should always eat dinner together.

"I think I'll get some soup then," he winked at me, and I rolled my eyes.

"I don't know how you can eat that crap," I said, once again showing my hate for soup.

"I still can't believe that you don't like soup. Seriously, there's probably some kind of soup out there that you like," He said, still drawing on the back of his paper placemat.

"Probably, but I'm not going to try it," I said, putting my head down.

"Hello, my name is Melissa, and I will be your waitress for today, are you ready to order, or do you want me to come back in a couple minutes," Melissa was a short, chubby woman, who talked really fast. She had piercings all up her ears, and I could see scars on her wrist. I didn't judge though, she seemed really nice, but when I looked in her eyes, I could tell she'd rather be anywhere then here.

"Uh, could I please have a fruit salad?" I asked politely, closing my menu, as I watched her scribble it down onto her notepad.

"Yeah, and I want a grilled chicken sandwich," She finished scribbling on her notepad, picked up our menus, smiled and walked away.

"I thought you were getting soup," I said, looking at him expectantly.

"I had a change of heart," He said, resuming drawing on his paper placemat.

"Did I ever tell you about how they almost sent me to a crazy house because my parents thought I had pyromania?" He asked, pausing to glance up at me with a small smile on his face.

"Thought? They were right, you do have pyromania."

"Oh, ha-ha, very funny. But it's true." He started to continue to draw.

"I never said that I didn't believe you" I crossed my arms and leaned my head back so that I could look at the light that was above our table.

"Still, you didn't sound convinced. And don't do that, it's bad for your eyes, you'll go blind," I looked at him after he said that, and I could see concern in his eyes, though he was probably trying to hide it.

"Okay, so I have a fruit salad, and a grilled chicken sandwich," Melissa was back pretty quickly with our food, and I was happy because I was pretty hungry.

"Thanks," I said as she set my bowl of fruit in front of me.

We got our food and ate in relative silence, commenting on random things every once in a while. Melissa came back many, many…many times. It was pretty annoying, but I didn't say anything.

After we got done eating, I talked Axel into paying for the meal, which was a lucky break for me. Every time I go out to eat with Sora, I end up paying, every time, he doesn't even bring his wallet around with him.

"So, now were do you want to go?" Axel asked, counting the money he had left in his wallet.

"I don't know, why is it my decision?" I asked, clicking a button so that the lights could change and we could walk across the street without getting run over by cars.

"Do you want to do something like bowling? Or maybe go to a museum?" Axel asked.

"How about we just go bowling," We ended up going to a bowling alley called Lee's Lanes. It was a pretty good bowling alley, it was pretty cheap, and the shoe sizes matched the actual sizes of shoes. We decided to play a game of ten rounds, and we each got to roll the ball across the lane twice each round. We also chose not to do bumpers, I thought that it would be pointless bowling if you use something that will guarantee you points every round.

I got to go first. I looked at the pins for a second, and then rolled to bowling bowl down the aisle, watching were it went the entire time. I almost got a strike. I knocked around seven pins down, and then the ones that fell ran into the other two, but after that, they got crowded and couldn't knock down the last pin. The second time I rolled the bowling bowl, I aimed it a little bit away, so that it could roll to the side and hit the pin, but it end up going to the wrong side, and instead didn't go anywhere near that last pin. I was a bit irritated, but it was only the first round, so I guess it's okay that I didn't get a strike or a spare, but I do wish I could have gotten off to a better start.

I went to sit on the couch that they have for every lane, taking a sip of my Pepsi. I watched as Axel's eyes looked back and forth between the pins and the ball a few times, how when he pulled his arm back, he bit his lip slightly and his shoulder blade was popping up through his tight shirt. I also saw his bicep muscle get a bit bigger for a split second from lifting the 16 pound ball in such a strange position. When, I saw him starting to turn around, I quickly adverted my eyes, I wasn't even sure why I was staring at him, I don't even know what I would tell him if he asked.

"I got a strike, I'm winning," He had a small smirk on his face, and I mirrored his face.

"Not for long, you're not," I got up and got a bowling ball of my own, and matching up the pins and the bowl, I got a perfect strike, but I could feel eyes on my back. I assumed Axel was watching me, so I sort of shrugged it off. Then, I felt another pair of eyes watching me, and I turned to look towards the door of the bowling alley, I saw a strange girl turning her head away and walking out of the building. She turned her head, so I didn't get a chance to look at her face or even recognize who she was.

"Now, Axel, who's winning?" I asked, taking another sip of my Pepsi.

"You got lucky there, but trust me, after this round, you're not going to be in the lead." He took a bite of his food, and got up to continue bowling.

It turned out to be a pretty even game. I won by four points. Most of the time, we would eat some food in-between turns.

When we left, it was starting to get darker outside.

"Hey, you think it's dark enough to go to the clock tower now?" Axel asked.

"Yeah, there should be a sunset over there. Come on, let's go there," We took our time walking there, we weren't really in a rush to get there. Axel started to have the slightest hint of nervousness hidden in his emerald eyes, but I only got confused by it. I chose not to question him about it, it probably didn't even involve me, and it was also something that he most likely didn't want to share with me. We were almost there, we could see the train station from across the street, when I got a call from Namine. This worried me, Namine rarely calls someone, and barely even uses her phone, unless it's something really important…and Sora can't call me.

"Hello?" I asked, not crossing the street.

"Roxas? Sorry to bother you, but Sora has fainted again. He's at the hospital with Cloud and Riku. Larxene's mom is going to drive me to the hospital. We can wait if you want a ride…" I was actually a bit worried. Sora had really low blood pressure, so this isn't the first, or second time he has fainted. I was nervous because the last time he fainted, he broke his wrist from landing on it with all of his weight. This time, I wasn't near were he fainted, so I have no idea how badly he could have fallen. Hell, for all I know, he could have fallen down the stairs, broken his neck, and went into a coma!

"Okay, thanks Namine, I'll find a way to get there as soon as I can. If So is awake when you get there, tell him that I'll be there really soon, okay?" I looked at Axel with a look that said 'I have to go somewhere, can you help me get there?' He nodded, and I heard Namine reply on the phone.

"Okay Roxas, I'll see you soon then…Bye." I ended the call, and put my phone away.

"Axel, Reno can drive right? Do you think he would be okay with taking us to the hospital?" I asked kind of quickly, looking for Reno on my phone to give him a call.

"Yeah, he'll be cool with it. Why do you need to go to the hospital?" Axel sounded kind of worried, his eyebrows were turned up in concern.

"Sora fainted, and I need to see him. The last time his fainted, he broke his wrist, I want to make sure he is okay," I finally found Reno, and I clicked call. I handed the phone to Axel, since I thought it would be better if he explain this situation to his brother, rather then me.

"Reno, hey I'm by the train station. Can you pick up me and Roxas and drive us to the hospital?…Okay…thanks, see you soon," He hung up, and handed my phone back to me. "Reno's going to be here really soon, then he'll pick us up and take up to the hospital. He can't give us a ride back though, he has a job that he needs to go to. Do you think someone else will be able to drive us back?"

"Yeah, Cloud's there, so he can drive us back home," I said. I saw Reno's dark blue car pull up from around the corner. We got in, and the car ride there was very silent. Reno had channel 96.1 on the radio. I didn't like most of the music on there, but it was much better then some of the channels. When we got into the hospital, I went straight to the front desk.

"Excuse me ma'am, do you know what room Sora Strive is in?" I asked very politely, but I was very rushed.

"Yes, he is in room 73, it's on the third floor, when you get off the elevator, you should turn left, and near the end of the hallway on your left side should be his room," she gave me a kind smile as I said thank you, and I headed straight for the elevator. Axel seemed just as rushed as I did, but I'm sure he was just trying to keep up with me so that he didn't get lost in such a large hospital as this. I pressed floor three on the elevator, and waited patiently for the slow contraption to move up.

"So, you said that Sora has fainted before?" Axel asked, trying to start a conversation. I took note that the nervousness that were in his eyes earlier is no longer there.

"Yeah, he has low blood pressure. We all do, it sort of runs in the family. Sora is the only one of the three of us that has ever actually fainted though. Namine and I only get dizzy on occasion." I said, a bit relaxed now that I was only minutes away from my precious younger twin brother.

"Well, at least you'll never get a heart attack, right?" We both chuckled a bit. I could tell that Axel was trying to lighten the mood, and to make me feel more relaxed. After all, fainting isn't nearly as bad as a heart attack.

We got to Sora's room soon enough, and when I saw Sora sitting up, talking and laughing with Riku, I smiled. He was okay, enough so that he was talking and laughing like he normally does. I felt a heavy weight lift off of my shoulders. I don't know what I'd do if he had a serious injury like a broken neck. He noticed me walk in the room, and smiled brightly at me, he patted the side of his hospital bed, gesturing me to come and sit next to him. I saw a lot of people there. I saw Cloud, Namine, Larxene and her mom, Axel, Kairi, and to the right of Sora, sitting next to him on his hospital bed, was Riku.

"Hey Roxas! It's about time you got here, I was afraid you weren't going to come! You'll never guess what happened! I fainted, obviously, and I was going down the stairs with Riku and Kairi, and Riku caught me! Thanks to him, I didn't break my neck!" Sora started to talk a bit more, about how he woke up from fainting before they even got him to the hospital, but I sort of tuned him out and looked at Riku. I gave him a warm smile, thanking him for helping my brother when I wasn't there to do it myself. I also glanced back at Axel, who was leaning on the wall with his arms crossed, and gave him a smile of relief, one that told him that everything was going to be just fine.

Sora got released from the hospital that night, and boy was the ride home hell. We had to squeeze in me, Axel, Riku, Sora, Kairi, Namine, and Cloud into the car. Kairi was sleeping over for the night. She and Namine shared the same seat in the front of the car while Cloud drove. Sora sat on Riku's lap for the hole ride, and I sat between them and Axel, in those tiny middle seats. Now, I know I'm not the biggest guy in the car, but those seats are built for the size of six year-old little girls, plus I was squeezed between Riku, Sora and Axel. I was so uncomfortable that it was almost unbearable. In this situation, I was pressed up against Axel, and I only realized now how warm he really is. I noticed that he was a bit warm Monday, but I only assumed that because I was soaked to the bone, so anything would seem warm to me. But, Axel really was warm. He felt like the concrete does on a hot summer day, except it didn't burn your feet, it welcomed you like a warm blanket. I tried to get as much physical contact with Axel without making it that noticeable. I even started to pretend to go to sleep, and I laid my head on his shoulder, and my head was in the crook of his neck, which was even more warm then his upper leg. Eventually, I got relaxed and ended up actually falling asleep.

We got home around eight o'clock at night, and no one was tired yet, so we decided to watch a movie. Sora and Kairi hate scary movies, so we decided to go with a movie called, 'What About Bob?' It was an OK movie, but I didn't really like it that much. I didn't really like that many comedy movies, but I knew Sora really liked them, so I got stuck watching them often. We also popped some popcorn to go with the movie, and I got some drinks for all of us. It was pretty good to have us all here watching TV together, but I couldn't get something off of my mind. I kept wondering why Axel would be so nervous when we were in the city. I was dying to ask him, but I knew I couldn't do that. I got even more curious about it, when I realized it was gone by the time we left to go to the hospital. I had no idea what he could be nervous about one minute, and then not nervous the next. I tried to focus on the movie, but I couldn't. I was really hoping that I would be able to figure this all out. To try and get my mind off of things, I told everyone that I was going to go to sleep early, and went up to my room. I got onto my laptop, and starting typing away at the keys. Writing always got my mind to focus on something else. At first, I thought that I heard my bedroom door open, but there were no lights on in my room, so I couldn't really see if it was or not, but I decided to just assume it was my imagination, and after a couple hours of typing, I decided to really go to sleep. I had pretty good timing, because after two or three minutes of putting away my laptop, I heard Axel come in, so that he could go to sleep. I heard him get changed, and lay down in the space next to me, I was surprised as to what he whispered before I went to sleep.

"Sweet dreams, Roxas,"

**Author's Note: **Wow guys. I'm so sorry. This took like, three days to type. I'm so sorry. I only got a couple hours to type on Monday, and on Tuesday, I had to finish two more of my projects, and I was too exhausted to type all night, so I only got part done. But! Today, we had a field trip to the zoo, (Because my school thinks we are six year-olds and still love the zoo) and I am so tired of walking, so typing was easy to sit down and do. Anyways, this chapter, is really weird, because I typed it up, but then I changed my mind about them going to the clock tower, so I just stopped them from going ha-ha. I hope it's not that bad, but I think you guys will really enjoy next chapter. Please review! It doesn't have to be that long, and it'll only take a second, so REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!


	11. A Halloween Kiss

**Disclaimer:** Don't own Kingdom Hearts or any other professional things I could possibly mention in this chapter. I don't own anything that the world knows about and pays money for.

**Warnings:** Yaoi, I can smell it in the air~ oh, and swearing, but I think you guys are mature enough to handle it, and if you can't, well I don't know, either skip over the word, or don't read this story I guess.

**Author's Note:** Yeah, I'm past chapter ten. Isn't that so cool? Yeah, I know it is. I'm actually really excited to type this chapter up, I think you guys are going to like it.

Chapter 11 - A Halloween Kiss

I didn't get that much sleep that night. I couldn't get what Axel said out of my head. It was just a normal way to say goodnight, but he said sweet dreams. I shrugged it off and went to sleep, but then I had one of those dreams about some other life again. I had one about were we talked about him teaching me what a day off was. For whatever reason, I didn't know what it was. Another thing that I had come to notice throughout these dreams are that we are all wearing black leather coats. I've seen Sora and Kairi in my dreams, and they never did. Riku was also there, and he sometimes had one, and other times he didn't. I didn't like these dreams, not only are they weird, and have a whole story line to them, when I wake up from them, I had a weird feeling on my body, like there was a heavy weight around it, and it is hard to move around when I'm in this state. But what really troubled me, is that Axel said sweet dreams, and then I got a dream like this. Of course, it could have just been coincidence, but my brain just wouldn't let it go. I woke up halfway through the dream, and I couldn't go back to sleep because I was so bothered by it.

When I laid in bed for a few hours, lying awake, I realized that I wasn't going to go to sleep anytime soon, so I decided to go downstairs and maybe get something to eat, or watch some TV. When I got downstairs, I saw Namine, just laying down on the couch, not watching the TV, but not asleep either. For a second, I thought that she fell asleep on the couch and was one of those people who slept with their eyes open, but when she actually greeted me, I realized she was actually awake.

"Namine? What are you doing awake? It's, like, three in the morning," I said, which was soon followed by a yawn.

"I could ask you the same thing, Roxas," She said quietly, almost like she was tired, but I knew that she would have a good reason to not be asleep at this hour. I paused, and thought over what I would share with her.

"I…had a nightmare, and couldn't go back to sleep, so I came down here, what's your story?" I didn't want her to know what really happened, but what I told her could be the truth, if I considered those dreams I had to actually be a form of nightmare.

"Roxas, have you ever once thought that maybe…maybe you had a past life, and there was something that you still had to do, so you were given another chance? Another way to start fresh, and do what you were meant to complete, or maybe even just…keep a promise you made to someone important to you?" I looked at her funny. Now, I don't have a specific religion, but I don't really believe in past lives, and being reborn as something new in another life. I just don't really think about things like this. I always assumed it was the same for Namine and Sora, but I never really asked them or anything.

"Not really, if there was something I was supposed to do, it should still be in my memory, so that I knew what to do and how to complete it…right?" I asked a little confused. It was a little bit difficult to communicate with my younger sister. I like to consider her a true poetess. Every word she says has such a deep meaning to it, and she knows exactly what she is saying, but sometimes, it is very hard to figure out what she is trying to say.

"But, what if those memories are with you…just locked up, deep inside your heart, and you still have to find them?" She asked hopefully.

"I'm not sure, but I think, if there is something that I was meant to do, then I'll do it, naturally. If I don't do it, then I wasn't meant to. But Namine, I think you should get some sleep, you sound tired, and your eyes are red and are starting to look dark under them," She looked a bit disheartened when I told her she should get some sleep, but she reluctantly went up to bed after telling me a goodnight with a small smile on her face, which I replied with my own goodnight and smile.

After my talk with Namine, I went to the fridge and got a glass of white milk and some chocolate chip cookies. I went back to the living room and turned on the TV, turning the volume down so that I didn't wake up anybody in the house. I stayed downstairs for almost an hour before I went back up to my room. I finished my chocolate chip cookies and brought half a glass of milk up to my bedroom. When I went in, I saw Axel at my window, drawing on some notebook. There was a full moon tonight and it was enough light for him to see what he was drawing.

"Hey, what are you doing awake?" I asked quietly.

"Couldn't sleep, I'm guessing you have the same reason?" He looked up at me and smiled. He looked absolutely perfect in the moon's light. His skin looked paler and smoother and his eyes were an even greener green, shining brightly in the darkness of my room.

I shook my head, stopping my thoughts from going any further. I've been having them about Axel lately, not even realizing that we were both guys, but I think it was safe to assume that I'm gay, or at least BI. I considered it the first time I had these thoughts, and I had a problem with it, thinking that I could never be gay, but I've grown to deal with and accept it. Plus, I knew that Sora, and everyone he told he was gay, would be okay with me being gay.

"Yeah, I woke up a couple hours ago, couldn't go to sleep, went downstairs, and had a snack and watched some TV."

"I only woke up a bit ago. When I realized I wasn't going to fall asleep again, I decided to finish up your costume," Axel replied, looking back down at the tablet in his hands.

"Yeah, Marluxia already has a couple of the costumes done. He's really fast but still really good at making things like that."

"I know, Larxene said that he makes some of his own clothes, and even makes some for her,"

"He should be one of those people who makes clothes," I paused, waiting for a response, when I got none, I continued, "We sound like girls, talking bout other people and clothes," I joked.

"Hey, at least we aren't making up lies," Axel said, pointing a pencil in my direction with a joking smile on his face.

"What time is it?" I asked, falling onto my unmade bed, my hands over my eyes.

"It's almost 4:30 AM. We need to be up for school in one and a half hours." Axel said, taking out his cell phone for the time.

"So, Friday's the first of October, huh?" I asked looking at my calendar.

"Yeah. 31 days until Halloween. Riku said we are just going to go and walk around the neighborhood and city. Maybe scare a couple of middle-schoolers or go to a party,"

"Okay, I don't really want to go around to people's houses asking for candy. It gets boring after a couple years, plus we can always get candy from the stores in those big bags," I pointed out.

"Yep. Hey do you prefer sharp teeth or sharp nails?" Axel asked, glancing at me, without turning his head, but moving his eyes.

"Uh, sharp teeth I guess, that way I don't need to wear fake nails," He nodded, and went back to his drawing.

"I'm going to try to go back to sleep, I have a test in Reading and I don't want to fall asleep in the middle of it," I said starting to lay down on my bed.

"We have a test in reading? Well, it's just reading, it can't be that hard. Can I have the rest of your milk?" He pointed at my green cup filled with the milk that I had earlier.

"Sure, if you're okay with drinking after me," I said, trying to get comfortable on my bed.

"You aren't sick, are you?" Axel asked, picking the cup up anyways.

"No, not anymore. G'night, Axel." I said, closing my eyes.

"Good night, Roxas,"

It felt like I woke up a second later, as if I had blinked and the time skipped two hours.

"Roxas, wake up, school starts in an hour," Axel was shaking my shoulder gently, trying to wake me from my short slumber.

"Mm, just another minute," I mumbled and turned away from him and the window that was beaming in the light from the sun rising.

"You said that ten minutes ago, come on, get up," I realized that Axel wouldn't stop, so I decided to sit up in my bed, I stretched and then rubbed to eyes to try and get myself awake.

"Finally, you're awake. I thought you'd be asleep all year," I took my pillow and threw it at him, trying to get Axel to shut up.

"Two more days until the weekend," I told myself quietly, forcing myself to get up and get ready for school.

"What?" Axel asked.

"Nothing, just talking to myself." I said, going to brush my teeth. Before I got the chance to walk into the bathroom, I saw Namine open up her door. Her bedroom is at the end of the hallway, and when the wall turns, there is the bathroom door, so if you go to the bathroom, you'll pass her door. I looked at her with a concerned face, making sure that she was acting more normal then she was last night,

"Good morning, Roxas," It sounded like she was, which I was glad about. I replied with a morning, and I heard Axel come out of my room, He had a clean pair of jeans on, and he was wearing a button up shirt, which wasn't buttoned up yet. I turned my head away, trying to hid the light blush that was forming on my face. I think that Namine noticed it, her eyes watched me as I turned away.

"Namine, I thought I heard your voice, I need you to give this to Marluxia, it's Roxas's Halloween costume." Axel handed her the notebook he was drawing on last night.

"Okay, thank you Axel. I'll give it to him as soon as I see him," She turned towards me, "Oh, and Roxas, I won't be home until about five. Kairi has cheerleading tryouts after school and she wants me to be there," I raised my eyebrow.

"Cheerleading tryouts? It's a month through school, why are they so late?"

"The caption of the squad had a surgery and needed a couple of weeks off, and they can't hold the tryouts without the caption," I nodded my head, it makes enough sense.

On Friday, Marluxia came to me after school, handing me four costumes, Xigbar's, Sora's, Riku's, and Namine's. He told me that he would give me the rest as soon as he could, but didn't want to keep all of those in the home ec. room, were he sews all the costumes together, to get stolen or food spilled on them. It was pretty hard to walk home with all of them in my hands, but I managed to get them there without any damages and not look like a complete idiot.

The next couple weeks went by very quickly. Axel and I have been spending a lot of time in those weeks. Sora was still teasing me about how we are going to go out and somehow have hundreds of babies. I still don't get my younger twin brother. Though, it has started to get worse because I've been getting more flustered at his teasing. Ever since September 12th, the day Seifer punched me, and I saw how Axel reacted, I started to fall for him, more and more everyday. I didn't tell anyone, I knew Sora wasn't the best at keeping secrets, even if he tried his best, but I didn't want to take any risks. I knew that if I ever told Axel, we wouldn't be friends like we are now. Even if he understood, didn't want to go out, and still wanted to stay friends, it would be way to awkward, and it wouldn't be the same, so I decided that I would keep it to myself, and wait for the feelings to go away.

On October 29th, there was a Halloween party at our school. It wasn't much of a Halloween party though. They just had decorations of bats and ghosts hung up around the school building, and we still did our school work, only it all had something with a childish Halloween theme. Sunday came soon enough, and Sora and I were getting ready to meet up with everyone else, and we started to get on our costumes.

"Roxas, can you help me? I don't know how to close the back, I can't find any of the buttons," Sora said, trying to reach his back better.

"Okay," I walked behind him and looked for something to close up the back of his costume, "Sora, you idiot, there's a zipper, not buttons," I laughing and pulled the zipper up, it was a perfect fit.

Axel did a really good job designing my costume. My mask* was half black and half white, and the facial features like the eyes and the mouth, switched to the opposite colors as they went into the other colored side. On the white half, the mouth is black, and then on the black half, the mouth is white. One of the eyes are also upside down, and there were tears of blood coming out of them. For my costume*, I had a spiked collar, kind of like a vampire would have, only less exaggerated. My sleeves and the bottom of my shirt were ripped off, and my shirt was short enough that if I was in a certain position, I could see my navel. There were a few rips in my shirt, but nothing that bad, and it looked like there was blood on it too. My pants were similar, and I had a belt with a strange, heart-like symbol for a buckle. I also had a short chained necklace with an X on it. ON my face, I had a stitch going down it, like Larxene's, only it went down my neck and disappeared behind my hair. I also had fake vampire bits, only it was covered up by a special kind of tape, but the fake blood still leaked through. I also had fake cuts on my wrist, and I had mummy-like bandages wrapped loosely around them. I also had a stitch going around my upper right arm. I put fake vampire fangs on my canine teeth with a special kind of glue that was meant for this. I put my tongue piercing just for good measure.

"Roxas, don't but that…that thing in your mouth, what if you want to eat something?" Sora complained as he watched me put it in.

"Sora, you can eat food with these things in, as long as you're careful, and besides, I can always take it out if I want to." Sora rolled his eyes, and started to play with a loose thread, tugging at it.

"Here, don't pull that, you could get a hole," I picked up and pair of scissors and cut it off for him.

"Ready to go?" Sora asked in his happy attitude again, getting out his phone to text Riku.

"Yeah, let me get my phone first," Sora went to go and get Namine, while I went into my room to get my cell phone. I looked out my window, and I could see Axel's house from across the street. One of the room's lights were on. I didn't know if it was Reno, or Axel who was in the room. I saw someone walk past, and I saw that it was Axel. He glanced out his window and then looked at something that was in his hands, moving his fingers quickly. I got a text message seconds after.

Message from: Axel  
>Are you ready yet?<p>

I looked back towards his house, and smiled, nodding my head. He looked really good in his costume, there wasn't a single flaw on his face, and the shadow that was on his face blended in with his skin just below his eyes, and it looked good like that, it made his eyes shine more. He picked up Panther, making it wave it's paw towards me, and did the same thing with Chloe. Then Sora came in.

"Roxas, come on, we got to go, I don't want to be late for Riku," He saw me looking out the window, and saw Axel out there. "Jeez Roxas, I hope you guys aren't having a strip show from across the street." Me face went red from what he said, and I glanced at Axel, who saw my red face and laughed.

"Sora, you idiot, we're both completely dressed, how could you even assume that?" I asked, hitting him on the shoulder, pushing him out of my room, glancing back and waving bye to Axel.

We all didn't get into a group until about an hour later. Marluxia was taking forever getting ready, and Larxene said that she wanted to redo Namine's make-up. But, we got done soon enough. I didn't even think that Marluxia looked as good as he could have with the amount of time he took.

"Are we all ready now? I only have until like, one AM, I have a shift to cover with Luxord," Xigbar complained after we got Marluxia out of his dressing room.

We walked around the city for a bit.

Kat Café was having a Halloween party, and we decided to go in there for a bit. They had a cliché dance floor that lit up in all kinds of different colors, but it was hard to tell when the people are crowding it. Sora went straight to dancing, dragging Riku along. Demyx also went, but he couldn't get Zexion to come with him. In the other corner of the café, there were a couple of couches with small snacks on the table in the middle of them, and next to them, there was a stereo system so that the people sitting there could hear a different type of music, but you couldn't hear it over the music from the dance floor. There was also a bar, but there were only a couple of old guys over there, and I think that one was passed out. There was also a place were you could actually get food, and a place for people who wanted to do karaoke. There were some games on the side near the sitting area, and it had Dance Dance Revolution. There was a huge screen that had abstract pictures that went in beat with the music that was playing from the DJ that was on a platform about ten feet off the ground.

Zexion went to the couches, and Xigbar went to the bar. Larxene went to go talk to the DJ, who ended up changing the song before it could end. No one seemed to mind though. Namine went to get some food, and then me and Axel were left.

"Up for some DDR?" Axel asked, elbowing me.

"Only if you're ready to loose," I said, walking towards the game.

"You're on,"

We started out the game with no one really paying attention to two people playing a game against each other. When we started to break records for some of the songs, we started to attract a crowd. We played eight songs, we could have played a ninth, but some kids asked if they could play, and we thought that we played enough for today. We got some food, and headed over to were Zexion was sitting, reading his book.

"Hey Zex, what's going on?" Axel asked, plopping onto a couch that was next to the one Zexion was on. I took a seat next to him with our food.

"I was reading, but now you've interrupted me," Axel started to eat some of the fries that were on my tray. Zexion started to glare at him. He raised his hands in a 'I surrender, stop attacking me' kind of way.

"Do you have a headache from the music?" I asked, noticing how quickly he got irritated. He nodded to my question. Axel glanced at me.

"How's come you can always read people's mind?" Axel asked, taking a sip of his Mountain Dew.

"I can't, I just observe the way a person acts," I was stirring the ice around my water.

"Don't you think that's stalker-ish?" Axel asked.

"It makes me sound smarter then you, so call me a stalker," I said setting down my drink, and standing up.

"Where are you going?" Axel asked, and even Zexion looked up from his book.

"To get Xigbar, it's almost one. We've been here for a few hours, Sora is probably getting tired, and Demyx is asleep on the couch,"

"Demyx is on the couch?" Axel's head turned toward the couch, and he saw Demyx laying his head on Zexion's shoulder, sound asleep.

I saw Xigbar still at the bar, and I sighed. There was no doubt in my mind that this guy was drunk.

"Xigbar, you should go to your job, it's almost one," I tried to speak calmly, but it always makes me nervous to talk to someone drunk, you never know what could happen.

"Wha? I don' have no job, you shoul jus go back to yo mommy," I sighed again. I looked at Xigbar's pockets, and I saw he had his phone, I could just call the Luxord guy he was talking about earlier to come and pick him up. I pretend to walk away, and when he turned his head away from watching me leave, I snuck up behind him, and swiped his phone, he didn't notice, so I went back to the couches, where the music seemed to be quieter. I looked through the contacts, and eventually found Luxord. I called the number.

"Hello?" I heard a voice on the other end of the phone.

"Hey, Luxord? You word with Xigbar, right?" I asked, wanting to make sure that I was talking to the right person.

"Yeah, what about him?" He asked.

"He's at Kat Café, and he's drunk. I can't drive or anything like that, so I need you to come and pick him up." I said, looking out the window to see if anything might be going on that he wouldn't be able to get on the road.

"Okay, I'll be there in 15 minutes or so, bye," He hung up before I could say bye, but I didn't really care. I snuck behind Xigbar again, and tried to put the phone back, but he noticed me this time. He thought that I was taking it, and gave me this ridiculous, slurred speech about how I should steal at such an early age, but it got around to something about dying my hair.

I came back to the couches, and Sora, Namine, and Riku were back. I didn't think that Larxene or Marluxia would be back anytime soon. Sora was talking a million words per second to Zexion, making him more irritated. Namine and Riku were having a quiet conversation, and Axel was writing 'Burn Baby!' on Demyx's cheek, in sharpie. They had this rivalry going on about whether water or fire was better. I knew Demyx would be mad, but I don't think he'll notice until tomorrow evening. The fifteen minutes passed soon enough, and Luxord came to pick up Xigbar. That meant that we could leave this place. Riku went and told Larxene and Marluxia that we were leaving, but they wanted to stay here, so we left without them. We found some middle school kids who were still walking around this time, so we thought we would scare them, although, Zexion, Namine and I didn't do anything. Demyx made them laugh because his face was written on, though he didn't even know why they laughed, and Sora made them laugh because he just wasn't good at scaring people. Riku and Axel were really the only ones who could bother them. Probably, if it weren't so late, Sora and Demyx could've scared elementary students.

Soon, we started to split up, Sora and Riku wanted some alone time, Namine went to go and help Larxene and Marluxia get home, and Zexion wanted to go home, so Demyx offered to escort him there. Axel and I decided to go to the park. At the park, there was a big lake that you could take a walk around, usually, that's were someone would walk their dog, or go for a run. It was a two mile walk around, but it was all flat land, so it was pretty enjoyable to go around. About a mile in through the walk, there would be a forest and it was nice to walk there in the summer so that It could give you some shade. In the winter, kids would come and ice skate on the lake, there was only one time when the ice broke, and a kid fell in, but he was fine.

It was quiet for a bit, and it made my mind wander back to when Axel asked me to go to the clock tower. He said he had something to tell me and he had a nervous look in his eyes when we were almost there. I was still curious about it. It left from his eyes when we didn't have to go to the clock tower, but instead had to visit Sora in the hospital. I thought I could ask him about it now. I started to feel light rain drops pouring on me. There was a light rain, but it wasn't bad enough to really get us wet to make us go home.

"Hey, Axel, do you remember that day, at school, you asked me if we could go to the clock tower, and just before we got there, we had to go to the hospital because Sora fainted?" I asked, trying to bring up the memory from weeks ago.

"Yeah, I do, why?" Axel asked, glancing at me curiously from bringing up the subject.

"Well, was there something you needed to talk to me about?" I asked. If I knew what he wanted to say, there might be a chance that I could piece together why Axel would be nervous about something. Axel chuckled, and I scrunched my eyebrows down, irritated that he wasn't taking this very seriously.

"Jeez Rox, that was so long ago, why bring it up now?" He had a point there.

"I don't know, at the time, it seemed like you didn't want anyone else to hear the conversation, and it's not like there is anyone else here," I said, looking away. The rain started to pour down faster, but we started to walk slower, focusing more on what the other was saying rather then how we should start walking faster so that we weren't as wet when we got home.

"Well, I guess that's true, unless someone's stalking us," We stopped walking now. I had a small wave a paranoia, and I glanced around myself to make sure that no one really was following us. "You scared?" Axel joked.

"Please, not in this lifetime," I bluffed, crossing my arms. I wasn't scared, I just looked around because he brought something up that got me paranoid for a second. The rain started to pour down a bit harder, and I became very grateful that Namine had me put on water proof make-up on. It seemed like Axel did the same, because his make-up wasn't running either. Slowly, Axel started to walk towards me, "So, you want to know what I was going to tell you?" He asked, he didn't have the look of nervousness in his eyes like he did when he was going to tell me a couple of week earlier. Well, my plan failed, I probably should've just asked him why he was nervous about it in the first place. Still, I nodded my head to show that I wanted to know what he was going to tell me. Soon he was really close, and I could feel heat coming to my face. It was bad for me to blush in a situation like this, even though I had make-up on my face, and it was raining, Axel could probably still see my blush clearly. The full moon that was out tonight was bright enough that we could see each other's faces clearly. Knowing that Axel could see my blush only made me more self conscious. I tried to look away, but Axel's fingers gently grabbed my chin and tilted my head up, so that I was staring right into his eyes. His face started to move closer, so slowly. I started to get more nervous, my heart started to beat so quickly I thought it would burst, he was so close, I could even feel his warm breath on my face. The rain was pouring down, and our hair was starting to flatten, although not completely. Then, Axel said four words that I never thought I'd ever hear come from his mouth.

"I love you, Roxas." And after that was said, he pressed his lips onto mine softly. My eyes widened. My heart sped up. I never thought this would have happened. He was my best friend, who loved me, and I loved back. I smiled softly into the kiss, closing my eyes, and pressed my lips to his. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and his other arm slid around my waist, pulling me closer to him. Our lips started to move with a harmony only we could make, our lips fitting together like they were meant to be together.

Soon, Axel's tongue ran across my bottom lip, asking for entrance into my mouth. I shyly opened my mouth, giving him some access, and our tongues danced together. He ran his tongue around my mouth, getting used to the area it was exploring. Axel tasted like chocolate and a faint taste of mint, probably from brushing his teeth. Soon, we broke apart, getting the air that we needed. I looked right into Axel's eyes, a small smile painted on my face.

"I love you too, Axel."

**Author's Note:** I promised myself I'd get this done by memorial day, and I did it. I'm proud of myself for once. Anyways, I only have six more days of school. I have one project and a civics test tomorrow, but I needed to get this done. I liked the way it turned out to be honest. I just skipped most of the month of October, but it might come up in future chapters, I'm still not sure. So, this is my first kissing scene. I don't know how I did, I think it's good for a first time, but not the best in general. Please tell me what you think or how I could improve. But finally, Axel and Roxas kiss, so now it's like the start…kind of. Also, I don't know why, but my one friend said that it's pretty fast if they only knew each other for 2 months, but I don't really think so. I know a lot of people get married in just 6 months, so I don't think it's that short. Sorry it took ten chapters before they got to kiss, but I think it was good enough. Also, sorry for the long author's note, but please, please, please review! Reviews are my fuel to write, they keep me going, so review!


	12. Gossip, Running, and a Fight?

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Kingdom Hearts, and it breaks my heart every time I have to repeat this to myself.

**Warning:** Yaoi. Okay, so it has occurred to me that yaoi is just sex for guys and stuff like that, so technically, this is shonen-ai, but either way…two guys are together and may have sex. Swearing, I guess…not much. Maybe some violence, but nothing that bad.

**Author's Notes:** Okay! So, I finally got them to kiss, but in more chapters then I expected. I think I've been making the chapters short in like, the first six or seven, so the chapters are slowly going to increase in length…if you haven't noticed. Also! I gave a recap from the last chapter, just so that it can start out making more sense, but it's just the last line. Anyways, I got excited to write this chapter, and I hope you enjoy reading.

Chapter 12- Gossip, Running, and a Fight?

"_I love you too, Axel." _

Soon enough, we got out of our trance of happiness, and Axel looked up at the raining sky, and soon looked back at me.

"We should head back, before the rain gets any heavier," He pecked my lips once more, and slowly pulled away, taking my hand into his and leading me back to my house. I heard a ruffling in the bushes on the side of the pathway, and I looked over, alert.

"What was that noise?" I asked, a bit confused as to what the sound was.

"It was probably a rabbit or something, but come on, I don't want you to catch a cold," Axel said it with a gentle face, as he softly pulled me towards him to start walking to my house.

About half way through the walk, we ran into Sora and Riku, except Riku was holding an umbrella with him. I bet they went to his house to pick it up. Neither of them saw Axel and I holding hands, so we walked behind them so that it wouldn't be as noticeable. I saw Sora giggling silently to himself, and then I saw Riku elbow him in the arms to stop him from giggling. I narrowed my eyes, they knew something. They also didn't want us to know that they knew it.

I wanted to tell them about Axel and I, but I wasn't even sure if Axel was okay with it, and even though I'm sure he would be fine with it, I didn't want them to know just seconds after it all happened. All we did was kiss, and confess our love for each other; I didn't know if we are actually going out now, and I didn't want to assume anything.

We got home soon enough, and I was happy. I was a bit tired, a lot of walking and dancing, it was pretty late, and a lot of things happened today. I saw Namine asleep on the couch. I gently lifted her head and slid a pillow under it, and covered her up with a blanket. I saw Riku kissing Sora goodbye, and I heard Selphie and Yuffie walk into the door. I sighed. Yuffie was a really sweet girl, but I knew she would be too energetic for me right now. She saw me and gave me a huge hug.

"Roxas! You're back! How was you're Halloween? I got twice the amount of candy I usually get so that I can share it with you! Oh, and can you eat all of my sour gummy worms? I don't like them. Maybe I should give you some sweet tarts since those are your favorite. Wait, are they still your favorite? I asked that a long time ago and I guess it could have changed…but what's the chances of that happening? Anyways, how was your Halloween? Was it fun? What happened? You look kind of tired," She must have said all of that in about two seconds, but I seemed to understand it all, which only made me more tired.

"Yuffie, I'm sorry, but I'm exhausted, I'll take some of your candy later, I just want to go to sleep." She understood with a cheerful smile and went off to talk to Sora. I went up to my room to get out of my Halloween costume, and I wiped off all of the makeup on my face. I went back downstairs to shut out the lights since Sora, Selphie, and Yuffie all went to their rooms. I made sure Namine was still comfortable, and then I saw Axel walking out of the kitchen with two mugs filled with hot cocoa in his hands. We went to my room and laid down on my bed, I took a sip of the hot cocoa.

"You know, you're a couple holidays early for hot cocoa," I said, staring into the cup with the chocolaty substance.

"I'm sorry, maybe we could have some candy corn for Christmas," Axel said jokingly.

"What'll we do for Thanksgiving then?" I asked curiously.

"Paint eggs, of course!" Axel set his mug down on my bedside table and got up to get out of his Halloween costume. I watched as he pulled that hand made shirt up and over his head, showing his lean torso as he did so. I saw him glance at me, and I looked away, blushing. I started into my cup of hot cocoa again, I was thinking of ask Axel about what happened at the lake. Were we together now? What was going to happen? Would we tell anyone? And who would we tell? I had so many questions to ask him, but I wasn't really sure how to ask him.

"So…" I tried, and failed, to bring it up into the conversation.

"So?" Axel tried to coax me into continuing what I was saying.

"So, what's going on now? Like, between us?" I asked, looking up at Axel, staring into his green eyes.

"Well, what do you think is?" Axel finished getting dressed and walked over towards me, he kissed the top of my head, "I love you, so we're together now," He looked down into my eyes, and I gave him a soft smile. "You'll be able to tell your brother and sister, your friends, and anyone else, as long as you're happy," He sat down next to me on my bed and I leaned onto his chest, his fingers running through my hair, relaxing me. I felt perfectly content. I never wanted to move, and I started to get more, and more tired as the seconds went by. Soon enough, I went to sleep in the warmth of Axel's comforting arms.

I soon woke up, and when I looked at the clock, it was almost noon. Axel was still asleep, and I didn't want to wake him, so I slowly got out of his embrace, replacing in his arms a pillow for him to hold onto. I wrote a note that I was going into the kitchen to make him a cup of tea.

I got down to the kitchen and I put some water on the stove so that it could boil. I decided to occupy myself so that it didn't take as long as it would if I were to watch water boil. I went into the living room, and I saw Namine starting to wake up.

"Good morning," I greeted quietly, I didn't want to be too loud since she just woke up. She slowly sat in an upright position, rubbing her eyes and then stretching. She glanced at me and nodded a silent greeting to me.

"I'm making some tea for me and Axel, do you want any?" I asked.

"No thank you, did you have a good Halloween?" she asked me.

"Yeah, I was a bit upset that it rained, but other then that it was really good," I had a huge smile on my face and I tried to look away so that my little sister didn't see it. She gave me a soft smile and she probably already knew what I was talking about, so she decided to drop the subject, for the time being.

I heard the water boiling, and went to the kitchen to take it off of the stone to put the teabags in. I poured the hot water into two mugs, one for each of us. After I got done with putting the tea bags into the water, I carried the cups up to my room. I put a makeshift lid over the mug to keep Axel's tea warm until he woke up, and I turned on the TV, turning down the volume so that I didn't disturb Axel's slumber. I glanced at him and I could tell that the noise was disturbing his deep sleep, but not enough to wake it. He changed his position, and his head found its way to my lap, and I started to run my fingers through his hair, like he did for me hours ago.

About an hour later, I saw him start to stir from his sleep. I took my hand off of his head so that he could sit up, he stretched out of his stiff position when he did.

"Good morning. I made you some tea, if you want any," I said, gesturing over to the cup of tea near him. He took it with a quiet 'thanks' and took a sip.

"I'm going to go and take a shower, if we get ready quickly enough, we could get a half day of school in," Halloween was on a Sunday this year, and Kingdom Hearts high allows the students to come for a half day if Halloween falls on a Sunday since we usually stay out so late.

"Okay, try to hurry though, I need to get one too," Axel started to keep about half of his wardrobe here since he always sleeps over unexpectedly. While Axel left to go and get a shower, I started to get out fresh and clean new clothes for each of us. They should've just given us a day off. Only about 20% of the school actually goes on the half day, and most are late still. We do have a cross country meeting today. It's not the correct season for cross country, so we don't have many meets, they are just there to prepare the members for what is going to be happening in the next few months.

About ten minutes later, Axel came out of the shower. I looked him over for a second. He had very feminine hips that had a towel wrapped loosely around them. He had a lean torso, with not very profound muscles, but you could tell he had them and was definitely strong for how thin he is. His hair was flattened completely but still held it's original hairstyle. Water was still coating him and you could see small goosebumps on his arms from the cold feeling of getting out of a shower. I looked away after noticing that I was staring at him and took things so that I could get a quick shower.

After we both got ready for school in such a short amount of time, Axel and I were about to head out on our journey to school. I remembered something that I had to do, and asked Axel to wait outside for me.

I quickly ran into the kitchen, looking for a scrap of paper, I found some scratch work for Namine's homework, and ripped off a blank corner. I looked for a pencil to write with, and when I couldn't find one, I got a bit frustrated and decided to write with a skinny dry erase marker instead. After I got done writing, I went up to Sora's room, where he was sleeping, and set it down on his bedside table. He was skipping school today, but it was only a half day, so it didn't matter that much and Cloud didn't say anything about it. Even though Cloud let us do our own thing, he wanted to make sure we were doing good in school, and that includes no unreasonable skipping.

The note that I gave to Sora said:

Sora,

I need to talk to you after school, privately. Come to me when you get this note.

-Roxas

I tried to get out of there as quickly as I could, but without waking my brother. I succeeded, but just barely. I disturbed his sleep, which caused him to turn in his sleep, and even mumble something that I couldn't hear, but I paid no mind to it.

I got outside as fast as I could, I didn't want to make Axel wait too long. I saw him across the street talking with his older brother. I walked over to were the two red heads were talking. I greeted Reno with a soft smile, but then a dark skinned man pulled up in a sleek black car, and Reno left, saying that that was his ride to work. Axel glanced at me and smiled, taking my hand into his.

"Come on, let's go. We don't want to be late, right?" I nodded in agreement, and we started on our walk to school.

We were about to turn the corner away from our houses, when I saw Yuffie running towards us at a super sonic speed. If she was on the track team, she would definitely get the best times.

"Roxas!" She screamed out my name, and she sounded very excited. I sighed, Yuffie was a good kid, but talking to her always made me so tired. Soon enough, she got very close, invading my personal space. She always does this when she is about to ask a question, she said that it makes people tell the truth more often because they are uncomfortable and pressured.

"Roxas! I didn't know you were going out with Axel! When did it happen? Who confessed first? How long have you been together? Neither of you guys even told me that you were gay! Or maybe you're BI? Well, either way, how many times have you guys had sex?" it started to get really awkward now, "Ooh, who tops in this relationship? Roxas is shorter, so wouldn't that automatically make him bottom? But isn't Roxas a bit older? Wait no, I think I'm getting mixed up with Riku and Sora. Well, I guess you guys could switch every once in a while oh and-" I tried to stop her before it got worse. I put my hand over her mouth, she tired to keep talking, but soon she realized that no one would understand what she was saying and stopped talking.

"Yes, we're going out. It happened on Halloween, which was yesterday, so don't even think about talking about sex, I don't want to hear it." I let go of her mouth, and she had a huge smile on her face.

"Okay, bye Roxas…Oh, and remember safe sex!" She ran off, probably to go to talk to her homeroom teacher Cid. I sort of feel bad for him, but I didn't think about it that much.

I sighed, leaning my head on Axel's shoulder, trying to calm my racing heart, and prevent a headache from coming. I heard Axel chuckling, and I opened one eye to look at him.

"What are you laughing about? The whole school is going to know in the next hour, and then everyone we know is going to come and question us why we didn't tell them," I wish I could just go back to my bed and fall asleep.

"It'll be fine, it's only a half day today, so we won't have to deal with it for that long," I sighed again, there wasn't much I could do about it now. I wasn't embarrassed to be with Axel at all, I was just a reserved person, and I didn't think that everyone at the school had to know who I was going out with, that's all.

We got to school soon enough, and my Ms. Tifa gave me a pass that was given to me by the office to visit the guidance counselor. I was pissed off. I knew the teacher talked to the counselor about it, and that is the reason I was sent down there. I know she meant well, but I didn't need a counselor, all they did was make me depressed for making me think that I actually need one. I went to sit in my seat behind Axel as the appointment with the counselor wasn't until my lunch time. I was supposed to get my lunch from the cafeteria, and then head to the guidance counselor's office.

"What's going on now?" Axel asked, turning around. He started to draw a picture on my hand, a new habit he has started to do recently. He'll just do random designs on my skin, and he started to use all kinds of colored pens to get the picture just perfect.

"Ms. Tifa wants me to go to the guidance counselor. I have to waste a perfectly good lunch in that hell-hole." He looked up at me and gave me a sympathetic look.

"Don't worry, lunch is always pretty boring anyways. It won't be that bad, they'll just ask a bunch of questions. Think of it as if you're a rock star and you're being interviewed for some magazine," I looked at him like he was crazy.

"Lunch is good whether it's boring or not, it's the one class where every one of my friends are. And I don't want to be a rock star, so why would I think of something like that?" I asked. Axel just shrugged, at a loss for words of encouragement, and continued drawing on my skin.

I saw Hayner, Pence, and Olette walking into homeroom together. They walked up to my desk, like they always did, and took the empty seats surrounding us.

"So…Roxas, you two are going out?" Hayner looked a bit irritated, and Pence and Olette looked at us with curious eyes.

"Yeah, just recently actually," I said, a bit unsurely as whether they are okay with it or not. Olette giggled, looking away a bit, and Pence looked down, scratching the back of his neck. I looked at him questioningly.

"Uh…I'm so sorry, I thought you guys have been going out for the past two months actually," He gave us a sheepish grin, apologizing for his misjudgment. Hayner still looked annoyed, but I thought I'd ask about it.

"Hayner, what's the problem?" I asked.

"What's the problem? Oh, I don't know. It's just, we're really good friends, and I have to hear about you going out with someone from listening in other people's conversation! I mean, honestly! I didn't even know you were gay before!" I looked at him and smiled a bit. It was just like Hayner to get upset about something like that.

"Sorry, I'll keep you up to date from now on, okay?" He seemed to get over it pretty quickly.

"But you know, you may want to be careful. Just about the whole school knows about you two. There are some serious homophobic people out there. You never know what they'll do to you." I nodded, understanding what he was talking about. He once told me about the story of his cousin, who was bisexual, and got shot by some kids who had a problem with the fact that he liked guys and girls. I also heard about all of those stories on the news of people killing others and themselves because of their kind of sexuality. Then, Olette decided to loosen the tension going on.

"So, Roxas I was thinking of writing a story about a romance. It could be between two boys, and it'll be the cutest story ever! There's a short boy, who has a twin, and he meets a tall red head that just moved to his school-" Axel abruptly stopped drawing on me to put his two cents in.

"Hey! You forgot to add in that he was the total sex god of the school." Axel joked and started to draw me again. Olette giggled before she continued.

"Yeah, and he just moved to the school. He was a beautiful artist and him and the twin began friends rather quickly, and eventually, they became the cutest couple on Halloween, and-" I decided to cut her off.

"So basically, you're going to write a story, about me and Axel's relationship, and plan to make a profit off of it?" I asked, trying to confirm my suspicions.

"Well…yeah, if the book gets published and put into the stores," She started to look really excited about it.

"No. You will do no such thing. I don't need some stalker reporter person writing about the happenings of my life. If I wanted that, I'd just make an autobiography" I usually would have crossed my arms, to make my point more firm, but I had to remember that Axel was drawing on my arm still. Speaking of it, I glanced down to look at what he was actually drawing, and I was really impressed. It looked like two of the 'keyblades' Namine had drawn once. They were crossed in an X and were both incredibly detailed*.

"Have you ever considered being a tattoo artist?" Pence asked, leaning forward to get a better look. Soon enough, all three of them had their phones out, taking a picture of what was drawn on my upper wrist. I liked it a lot too. I even got out my phone to take a quick picture. I'd have to get Marluxia's critic eyes to look at it and see how someone judging art would think about it.

Class began after that, and I began to dread about how much sooner my trip to the guidance counselor in the next few hours.

I noticed that Riku wasn't at school today either. He was in my second period, but Sora and Axel didn't know about that yet. It just never came up in a conversation, so neither of us ever said anything. Either way, I wouldn't be surprised if him and Sora were on a romantic date in the park or something like that. I was hoping Sora found my note. I did want to talk to him about me and Axel, and I was so happy that he didn't go to school today, that way he doesn't hear from the information Yuffie spread. She probably didn't mean for it to spread as much as it did, she didn't just openly announce things like that. She was probably just so excited, and told someone, and it was loud enough for others to hear and pass it along. But, it wasn't like it was some secret that I didn't want anyone to know for fear of embarrassment, so I wasn't really that upset with her. I do want to tell Sora and Namine it personally though. They were family, and if they have something to tell me, they'll tell me, and I won't have to hear it from someone else, so I want to do the same thing for them.

Because it was a half day, classes weren't the usual length, they were much shorter. We usually got out of school at 2:45, but since it was a half day, and half days start at one, we usually leave at four PM. Homeroom and lunch are both a half hour, and then every other class is 15 minutes.

School seemed to take forever. Any time that the students were allowed to do work instead of the teacher explaining something, Axel and I were always questioned by visitors. They were usually girls who ask things like "Are you guys, like, for real dating?" or "You guys are so cute together! Can I get a picture with you two?" and sometimes even "Why are you dating him! Why not me?" Then the girl would cry a bit, Axel and I, being the kind people we were, would try to comfort her, and then she would just reply with "I'll only forgive you two if you either break up and go out with me, or have a love triangle between us." We flatly refused the offer, and didn't care about the girl anymore when she ran out of the room, crying her eyes out. I was so glad that that had only happened twice.

When school was over, Axel and I had to go over to the track field for the cross country meeting. Usually, the team will meet up there, and when everyone is present, the coach will lead us into the woods that the school owns. They made a trail there so that the cross country team could run in there and it would be easier to see the signs of how far we have ran rather that needing to count how many times we go around the track field.

I wasn't sure if it were worse here, or at school. The boys asking us were worse then the girls! Some even asked us about how we even knew that we were gay. And I do have to admit, I don't really think that I'm gay, I've never liked any other guy before in my life, I just think Axel is sort of an exception. I'd rather just say that I was gay though, much less complicated to explain.

Pretty soon, when Axel and I were being bombarded with questions, coach got us to do a warm-up run. It was only a mile, which was were we had to run to the bridge, and then back. I really did like to run, it let me think, and I couldn't be interrupted by other people. It was a better sport then soccer or football, where you had to pay attention to what you're doing and thinking of all kinds of strategies to beat the other team. In cross country, you just ran. The only one you're competing against is yourself, trying to beat your own time. And if you didn't want to beat your own time, you could go into a competition and race against others.

I kept a steady pace through the warm-up. I didn't feel the need to be the fastest there. It was only a warm-up, and I didn't want to get tired for the actual running. There was about four people in front of me, the team was separated by boys and girls. There was a total of 34 on the team, but only about twelve of them were guys. There was a male coach for the guy's side, and a female coach for the girls'. We all ran together, but when it came to the times, the expected scores would be different. The guys' expected time was smaller then the girls' so we had to run faster. I never understood why the girls always had it easier, and when I asked they told me all about how boys naturally have more muscles then a girl and need to do more to keep them up, but I still didn't really buy that completely.

When we were done with the warm-ups, the coaches had us do stretches so that we didn't pull and muscles in our legs. Then, the boy's team got sent off to run six miles. We would run the path, and when we got to the bridge, instead of turning around like we did for the warm-up, we would turn left, and when we saw the playground, we needed to turn around and run back. The coach let us go at our own pace, but they came running with us so that if someone fainted, had an unknown asthma attack, or anything else, they could help. We were given watches to check our time, and they let us start.

I ran at 75% of my strongest speed. I kept that up for a mile. I kept my breathing even, and made sure that I wasn't going in a zigzag motion, that would only waste my energy. I started to think about nothing in particular, just letting my mind wander. I was wondering how far away from me Axel was. He wasn't a slow runner at all, he was probably faster then me, but he always started running really slow, and got faster the longer he runs. When I got to two miles, I slowed to only running 50%. I'd probably be running this fast for the next three miles. I wasn't around any runners for the time. There was one runner ahead of me, but I couldn't see him at the moment. I occasionally looked behind me to see if anyone was coming, but I didn't see anyone either.

About halfway through the run, I started to notice how I hadn't run like this in a long time. I did stay exorcised over the summer, but I didn't run for six miles straight since last year. My throat was dry, but I wasn't close to stopping for a break yet. If I kept pacing myself, I may not even have to stop.

When I had been running for four miles, I started to speed up to my original 75%. After a while, I felt my chest burning, and I loved that feeling. It's what kept me running. I barely even felt my surroundings anymore. All I felt now was my feet hitting the pavement and the soft breeze refreshing my face. About halfway through the mile, I felt myself getting slightly numb. My body was just moving on its own, and it felt like I was floating in the air.

When I was down to the last mile, I started to run a full 100%. I still hadn't seen anyone the whole run, which I was pretty happy about. Most people on the team try to talk to me, and when I run, I want to be thinking and letting my mind relax.

I started to hear footsteps behind me. They footsteps sounded really fast, a lot like the speed my feet were going. I looked back and I saw Axel. He was catching up to me really fast, and I knew he wanted to get done before me for a better time. The mile was almost up, so I decided to go into a dash for the rest of the run. It took much longer then expected for Axel to catch up to me, but he was still slowly getting closer. Soon, he was next to me, but was purposely not passing me up. I gave him a weak glare, I was tired from the dash, so I couldn't put that much energy into it. I started to push myself to go faster, when he saw that I did, he matched my speed, running next to me again. I saw the are where we had started and realized that the run was almost over, and if I didn't run faster, Axel would have beaten me. He didn't even look that tired, he was of course panting from running this distance, but it looked as though he started to run only a little while ago. He probably jogged the whole thing and started to run when he got close to the distance.

I started to run as fast as I could push myself. I didn't want to trip, so I had to make sure that I looked ahead for no uplifted stones, and I had to make sure I set my feet correctly so that I didn't trip over them. I saw that one kid who was originally ahead of me was done with the race, he was sitting on the ground, panting and sweating, trying to get a drink from his water bottle, but spilling most of it on his face or neck.

Soon, we were feet from the ending point, and I knew I wasn't going to win. Axel wasn't going as fast as he could while I was for the most part. He would just keep going faster and faster, so I just decided to give him the win.

While we waited for everyone else to finish, we got a drink, and had a small conversation. I texted Sora to see if he was awake yet.

"Hey Axel, would you mind if you didn't come over today? I have to talk privately with Sora, and I'd rather you not be there and everything." I didn't want to be rude or anything, but I did still want him to know the truth.

"Yeah, that's fine. I have to go to the store anyways, Reno said that we're running low on food." I smiled. I was glad that Axel wasn't bothered that much by it.

"Thanks, I can have Cloud come and pick us up," I got out my phone to call him. Sora replied back, saying he was awake and got my note.

"Sure, I haven't seen Cloud in a while," Axel pointed out.

"He had an overnight business trip and was gone for three days, Xigbar took some vacation days to watch us." Axel looked at me, starting to think about what I had said.

"If Xigbar is old enough to watch someone for three days, why is he in a foster home still?" I shrugged. He did have a problem with drinking, and Cloud didn't seem like someone who would kick people out, but you never know. He probably let Xigbar stay there because he could watch the foster kids when Cloud had a business trip, like just recently.

Cloud came pretty fast, and he went to the coaches to tell them that he was picking us up. It was done like this so that the coaches knew that the kids weren't being abducted by some random person.

On the ride home, Cloud dropped Axel off at the grocery store. He told Cloud that he had his cell phone with him so he could call Reno for a ride home. Cloud seemed a bit uneasy just leaving him in out there, but didn't really say or do much about it. When we got home, I changed out of my running clothes. I couldn't stand being stuck in clothes like these all day. Axel was smart enough to bring another set of clothes with him, so he didn't have to walk in sweaty clothes at the food store. When I was done getting my clothes on, I went to find Sora. I saw Namine sitting on the couch drawing something. She looked up at me and gave a soft smile, but them went back to drawing. Yuffie already told her about how Axel and I were dating. Yuffie usually told Namine new things that she learns, and I was a bit upset about it, I did feel like it would've been better if I told her, but Namine didn't seem bothered by it, so I didn't worry over it.

I went outside in our back yard and found Sora on the bench swing playing a video game on his PSP. He heard me close the door and looked up at me. He smiled and walked up to me, leaving his game on the seat he used to be occupying.

"Hey Roxas. Was there something you wanted to talk about?" We both walked back into the house while having our conversation.

"Yeah, do you want to go out for a walk?" I asked. It felt really stuffy in the house, and I just felt like going outside to talk to my twin.

"Sure, let's go,"

We walked for a while. The first few minutes were silent, but soon Sora just started to talk, filling the silence with all of his words. We had a small conversation, and didn't really notice where we were going. I knew the whole area and how to get back to our house, but I wasn't exactly sure where we were.

"So Roxas, what were you going to tell me?" He abruptly stopped what he was originally talking about to ask me this question. It caught me by surprise and I stuttered a bit.

"O-oh, well me and Axel-" I started, but Sora interrupted me.

"Are dating? Finally! I though that it would take forever for you two to start dating, I mean seriously! What was taking you guys so long." I smiled softly. Of course Sora knew, he knew we would be dating the second he saw Axel and me hanging out.

We had been walking along for a while now, and the sun was starting to set. We were in a bad part of town, and I didn't want to stay too long. I was one of those paranoid people that thought that something bad would happen if they are in a place like this at a time like this. I never realized I had been so right before.

"Hey guys, look what we have here. Some gay fags that think they can just walk around in our neighborhood. Maybe we should pay them back for what they did for us." I froze. There was only one person that voice could have possibly belonged to. I turned my head back slowly, to confirm my thought. I was right. It was Seifer. He had his whole gang with him. Fuu, Rai, and Vivi were all standing behind him in the shadows of the alley. I looked over at Sora to see how scared he was. His eyes were like saucers and his skin was as pale as a vampires. Seifer had tried to beat up Sora, when I came in to protect him. Seifer got beat up by Axel, and even got suspended. I know for a fact that he isn't going to let us go on our way. Not only that, but he is a homophobic. He already didn't like me, and now the news was sent to him that I'm gay, I'm sure that just made things worse.

I saw Seifer walking towards us, and he was even doing that stupid knuckle cracking thing to look scary. I looked over at Sora and knew he had to get out of here.

Before I knew it, Seifer had already gotten towards me, and seeing I was distracted, he punched me in the face. My thought process was interrupted from the pain he caused. I took a step back, and balled my fists up. I didn't want to hit him that hard, so I punched him in the face, once with each hand. I took another step back and kicked my leg up to met his chin. I sent him hurt body to the ground, giving me a couple of seconds to spare.

I pulled out my phone, and tossed it to Sora.

"Sora, you need to get out of here. Go and get Axel, he should be at the grocery store, if he's not there, his number is in my phone, now go. I'll make sure they don't follow you. And hurry," I looked in Sora's eyes and I could tell he wanted to protest. I gave him a serious look that said that this wasn't the time to argue, just go and do what I said. Sora set of running. The rest of Seifer's gang didn't know whether they should chase Sora or get back at me. They started to go after Sora, and I readied myself to do whatever I could to stop them. I saw Seifer sit up, he had a red check and scratches from the bottom of my shoe on his chin. I knew this wasn't good. He looked more mad then he was before, and I knew he'd take that anger out on me.

"Hold him down!" Seifer yelled. In a second, Fuu, Rai, and Vivi were all holding onto me. I knew I was trapped. Fuu and Vivi were on my left, and Rai on my right.

"Roxas, you've done a lot of bad things lately. You stop me from getting to Sora, _twice._ You get me beat up by your precious _boyfriend_. You also got me suspended from school, something that will show up on my record. And you even have the nerve to _hit_ me! Do you really think, that I'm just going to let you walk along to your home, and not repay you for all this?" Seifer paused to give me time to answer.

"I was protecting my brother, Axel did that, not me, you've been suspended plenty of times before that, and you hit me first, I was only using self defense!" I shot at him. I glared, I didn't like Seifer one bit, he thinks he can blame all of that stuff on me, and then do something worse to me. I wasn't the one at fault here.

"Let him go, I'm done talking. I want to have my fun now," My eyes widened. Fear found it's way into my body, and I didn't really want to be let go, if that meant that Seifer would beat the crap out of me. The three loyal puppies let me go in an instant, moving out of the way to not get hit.

The next thing I know, I get punched over and over again. Two times in the face, the once in the stomach. I punched him back to try and get him to stop punching me. He got even more mad when he felt blood falling from his cut lip. He tackled me onto the ground, and I cursed in pain. I landed on my left arm wrong. There was a part of my lower arm that felt terribly painful. The pain was so intense that I couldn't even cry from it. It felt like pins and needles were going through the bones, and it sent shockwaves of pain right down to my fingers, which felt like they were on fire. For a split second I saw a flash of white light, but it was gone before I could comprehend that it had been there. Seifer hit me two more times before I could shove him off of me. I looked at my arm and I saw it was swelled and bruised in the spot that I felt needles.

From behind me, I heard Sora and Axel coming towards me. I was focused on them, and not Seifer, which was a big mistake. Seifer came up behind me and hit me harder then he had ever before. I started to get dizzy again and my vision was going black. All I could hear now was Axel telling Sora to call an ambulance, Seifer falling to the ground, and sirens all over the place, before I went to sleep.

**Author's Notes:** Guys I am soo sorry. This is so late, I cant even forgive myself. I rewrote this chapter like 3 times before I was happy with it, and I didn't type at all last Friday or Saturday because my friend stayed the night and then we went to the mall. Anyway, I'll get the next chapter up much faster then this and I'm so sorry for the long wait. But, school is over now, and I can focus more on writing that on school work. Again guys, I'm so sorry I'm so late, and the next chapter will be up faster then this. Please, if you could find the kindness in your hearts, and forgive me, and review, I would be so grateful.


	13. A Difficult Past and Unwanted Words

**Disclaimer:** I don't anything…and I never will.

**Warnings:** If you don't know them by now, I might cry. Yaoi…cursing…anything else.

**Author's Note:** Hey guys, it's me again for a thirteenth chapter. I'm in a bit of a predicament. I know what I want to do with this story, but I'm not really sure how to end it. Maybe by the end of the school year in the story, and then if someone requests, a sequel of their summer vacation? I'm not positive, but I'd love to know your thoughts about it. I do want to finish this before July, but I'm not sure if that is possible. I do want to let you guys know though that:

***Important PLEASE Read*** For the month of July, I will be going to my mother's house, which is in another continent. My mother and I don't have the best relationship with each other and thus, she doesn't allow me on the computer often. She only gives me like an hour every 3 days. That means, I will not be able to update for the month of July. I'm soo sorry, if I could stop it, I would, but I can't. Please understand. I will try to finish this story before that, but if I don't, I will write out the rest on paper, and when I get back, I will type it up and post it. ***Important PLEASE Read***

Anyways, please enjoy the chapter and review. If you guys have any requests or something you'd like to see in this story, please tell me and I'll try to put it in as best as I can.

Chapter 13 - A Difficult Past and Unwanted Words

"_Oh Sora, sweetheart, please don't make a mess. Mama has to feed Namine, she can't clean after you." A three year old Sora looked up at his mother with wide blue eyes._

"_I can cwean it up for you Mama!" Three year old Roxas came running towards his twin brother, wiping off his face and hands, wanting to help his mother from being so stressed._

"_Thank you, Roxas. You're going to grow up and be such a sweet man." _

_She looked at him with her caring green eyes. Her long brown hair was in a braid, help securely with a pink ribbon. She had a long pink dress on, and she had a soft face with a  
>kind heart.<em>

"_Mom, do you want me to put Namine in bed? You can take a nap, I'll watch over Sora," A five year-old Roxas looked up at his mother, seeing how tired she was, working two jobs. Roxas had learned to watch over his siblings at a very early age._

"_Thank you Roxas, you really are growing up too fast." The mother of three handed a toddler into the boy's hands, going to lay on the couch._

"_Mommy, I got the mail, and all the letters are for you," Sora, walked through the door, coming inside from playing, and gave his mother the mail. She noticed the first one was from her job, and she decided to open it first._

_Dear Aerith,  
><em>_We are sadly informing you that you can no longer be working here. We are having a hard time keeping up the company, and while others are working hard, you must take breaks. We made some cuts, and you were sadly one of them. We wish the best for you and your family._

_The young woman sighed. She had three children to feed, she couldn't be fired from her job. She took time off because of her children. She couldn't expect a five year old to watch children for who knows how long._

"_Mommy? What's that? Is something wrong?" Roxas stared into his mother's eyes, worried._

"_No, there is just some troubles at Mommy's work, nothing to worry about. You should just go and play with your brother." Most of the worry in the young boys eyes left, but he decided to trust his mother, and went to go and play with his twin._

"_Mommy, can I skip breakfast?" Roxas asked before his mother started to cook. _

"_Now, why would you want to do that? You need to eat, and grow up to be healthy and strong. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day," _

"_But, Mommy never has breakfast, and I want to give my breakfast to her," _

"_How about, we share, so that you can have some, and I can too. I want to make sure that you can be a healthy boy," His mother wanted to make sure he was in good health. _

_The year was hard, Roxas's mother only had a part time job, and it was struggling for her to keep a roof on their heads, and food in their stomachs. One day, Roxas and his mother were at a market, looking for some fruits to buy, when Roxas noticed a flower shop with a "Looking for employees" sign on it._

"_Mommy! You should work at that place! It has flowers and you love to take care of flowers!" The flower store really helped the family of four to get back on their feet, and soon, Aerith became the owner of the store, letting the family be well off again. Soon, they lived in a three bedroom house, and everything was peaceful for the family. _

"_Mommy! Mommy! Look! I got straight As on my report card for the year! I even got one for science!" Six year old Roxas had just gotten back from school, and he was so excited to show his mother his good grades for the year._

"_Oh Roxas, what a smart boy you are. How about we can go to the toy store and get you something for a reward?" Roxas's eyes lit up with happiness. Aerith called a nanny over to watch her other two children, who she loved dearly and didn't want anything to happen to them._

_Roxas never knew about how sad he would become after getting his toy from the toy shop. _

_His mother's lifeless eyes looked at him with no emotion. Her skin was ice cold, and was deathly pale from the loss of blood. Her mouth was slightly parted. Roxas felt something wet touch his cheek, he brought his tiny finger up towards his face, touched it, and brought it down to examine the substance. Blood. The young boy screamed bloody murder.  
><em>

* * *

><p>I woke up from my dream abruptly. It was another dream about my mother's death. I haven't had it for quite a long time. The last time was before the anniversary of her death. I felt tears rolling from my eyes, and I started to take notice of my surroundings. I was in a hospital. The plain white walls and the bright lights seemed to calm me a bit. I never hated a hospital. The white walls and floors made me feel as though I didn't have to worry about anything. Whatever happened to me was up to the nurses and doctors.<p>

"Roxas, are you awake?" I turned to my left and I saw Axel. His blood red hair definitely made an impression in contrast to the white walls. His jade eyes were filled with worry and concern.

"Yeah, but, why am I here? I remember Seifer hitting me in the face, but that's all," I looked at him, hoping to get some answers.

"Well, Sora got me just in time. We called 911 after you blacked out. The police came and arrested Seifer. He'll probably go to Juvenile Detention. We also called an ambulance. Your left arm is broken and you have a few stitches above your eyebrow." I was a bit surprised. I wonder how long I was out.

"What about his gang?" I asked. I was a bit worried of going to school and them beating me up for getting their leader in trouble with the police.

"They ran away when they saw the police. I won't let them anywhere near you though. Do you know how scared I was?" Axel's eyes were red, and had bags under them. He must have been exhausted. He came closer and wiped the tears off of my cheeks.

"I'm sorry," I whispered softly.

"Did you have another dream about your mom?" Axel asked, I just nodded my head. Axel brought me close into a tight embrace, rubbing circles on my back. A few more tears came down my face and even got on Axel's shirt. I hoped he didn't mind that much. It still hurt to think about my mother's death. I was so close to her, I was still really young, and I was attached to my mother more then anything. I always wanted to help her around the house. I always noticed how stressed or tired she was, and I wanted to do anything I could to help her. I even learned how to take care of Sora and Namine so that when we were out of school I could watch them for the rest of the day.

"I miss her," I said softly. I found comfort in Axel's arms, they were warm and they put me at ease.

"I know," Axel slowly pulled away to look into my eyes. He wiped away some tears and kissed my forehead. "But, don't you think she would be happier if her son moved on, and lived a happy life? I'm sure she wants you to experience all kinds of things, and not to dwell on her. She wants to look down and see her son's smiles, not his tears." I decided Axel was right, and I gave him a soft smile.

"There we go," He kissed me, and our lips started to move in sync with each other. I wrapped my right arm around his head, digging my fingers into his hair. His tongue came out and started to explore my mouth some more, and I let out a soft moan. He tasted like sweet freshly picked strawberries.

"Whoa guys. This is a hospital, not a bedroom. Save those things for home," Sora walking in with a teasing face on. He probably heard me from the other room and decided to walk in at this time. Still, I blushed, and looked away trying to hide it.

Sora jumped onto the hospital bed right next to me, making himself comfortable. I saw him take out a sharpie, and then he asked if he could sign my cast. I simply nodded to his question, and watched as he wrote his name on the blue cast. It didn't go past my elbow, but it covered the palm part of my hand and connected between my thumb and pointer. I could still use my fingers, but I couldn't bend my wrist. The door opened and I saw a nurse walk in.

"Oh, Roxas, you're up, that's good news. You've been out for a long time, would you like something to eat or drink?" The nurse seemed genuinely kind, but I don't think she really cared about how I was doing. It was her job, and she didn't even know me.

"Um…could I just have some water please?" I asked her politely. She nodded and went on her way to get me a drink. Soon, everyone started to pile into my room. Cloud, Namine, Reno, Yuffie, Selphie, Zexion and Riku. Cloud came up to me first.

"How are you doing?" He looked really concerned.

"I'm fine." Cloud really was a good foster parent, he is just always very busy with work and everything so he can't hand out with us much. He was pretty young for a foster parent too. He was 27 and turning 28 in August.

Everyone went around signing my cast, even Reno did. Cloud didn't really want to at first, but Reno convinced him to anyways. They weren't really on good terms, but they were civil enough with each other to stay in the same room. After that, the doctor came in with the nurse trailing behind with my glass of water. He just retold me of my injuries and told me when my check up appointment would be. They would be taking out my stitches in seven days, and my cast would be taken off in 6-12 weeks, depending on how quickly my arm heals.

I got out of the hospital that same day. I was pretty happy about it, I'd rather be at my house and everything.

Axel came with me and stayed with me, saying that if I needed anything I should tell him. We sat in a comfortable silence for a while. I was laying on his chest, watching TV. My mind wandered back to my dream I had. I still missed my mother, but it was a lot easier to handle with Axel being by my side. Then, I started to think about Axel's parents. He never talks about them, and I have never seen them at his house. I've only ever seen Reno, or one of Reno's friends, and maybe some of Axel's friends while I was over.

"Axel?" I asked, partly to make sure he was still awake.

"Yeah?" He asked. He looked down at me, and I think he expected me to ask him to get me something.

"If you don't mind me asking, but…where are your parents?" I felt him tense from beneath me, and the arms he wrapped around me got tighter, but not uncomfortably. When I felt him tense, I looked up at him, using my eyes to show my concern and apologizing if I went too far.

"They…don't take care of me and Reno anymore. Reno is my guardian." I could tell that he didn't really want to talk about it. I was curious, but I didn't want to pry, so I dropped the subject.

Kairi and Axel stayed with us for dinner. Even though Axel stayed at my house a lot, he usually had dinner at his house with Reno. Xigbar wasn't here today, he had classes, and Zexion went over to Demyx's house.

After dinner, Axel and I went up to the clock tower to have sea salt ice cream. It was really nice being up there and watching the sun set, but it was starting to get colder. It was already November, and Thanksgiving was coming up in a couple of weeks, but it wasn't the most celebrated holiday in our family.

When we left, we went back to Axel's house. His room was just full of candles. Even in his closet, he had a stash of brand new candles incase one got too small. I knew it was all due to his love for fire, but I think the candles were a nice touch to his room, and a nice substitute since his room didn't have a light in it. After he lit all of them, We settled ourselves on his bed, me laying on his chest.

"Watermelon and cinnamon? Isn't that a risky combination of scents?" I asked.

"You have to take a risk once in a while, sometimes it makes a wonderful new creation." Axel commented. Everything in the room had a nice romantic appeal to it. There was a full moon out and it was shining through the window, the candles danced together and gave everything a soft light. Even the smell had a nice touch to it. The room smelled like watermelons, but after that, there is a touch of cinnamon, like an aftertaste for food. Axel was holding me in his arms and everything was so peaceful, and I was perfectly content.

"So…you wanted to know about my parents?" Axel asked. I looked at him surprised.

"W-well, yeah, but I don't want to intrude. If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to, it's not really any of my business anyways," Axel sighed.

"No, it's alright. I want you to know." Axel took my hand and started to play around with it, focusing on it as he began his story, "My parents had their first child, Reno, at a young age. My mother was only fifteen. Still, we had a pretty easy life, and they were pretty responsible for being such young parents. Then, when me and Reno started to get older, my dad started to take up gambling. They left us alone, and Reno always had to watch over me. Sometimes, they would even come home drunk. My dad never wanted kids, so he always gave us a hard time when he was drunk. I never knew until I got older, but he would always hit Reno, and my mother didn't do anything about it either. It didn't happen that often, but I knew Reno hated it. Eventually, they got a lot of money from the gambling. Thousands and thousands of dollars were at their disposal, and I wouldn't be surprised if they sold drugs for some more money. Anyways, they just up and left one day, leaving everything behind, even us." I looked up at him, his eyes were filled with hatred. I could never understand why a parent would leave their own child. I've definitely heard and seen it before, but I could never really accept it. "Reno was only in eleventh grade. He had to take care of me because I was still so young. His grades dropped, and he was thinking about not going to college. He even had to lie about his age and start working at whatever place he could. Luckily, he could forge my parents' signatures so no one really realized we were on our own for so long. Before anyone noticed, Reno turned 18 and got custody over me." I could tell Axel had a deep hatred for what his parents had done to him and Reno. I wasn't really sure what I could say. I grew up with a kind, loving mother, I couldn't relate to someone who hated their parents. But…I know that if someone did something like that, leaving two young kids to just fend for themselves, no money, and no guaranteed shelter or food, it would be unforgivable, even if they are the parents.

"Everything will be okay," I began slowly, "Maybe it was better that they left, that way, you don't have to deal with them. They could have hurt you more if they stayed. And, Reno looks so happy every time he goes to his job. It may not be the life you expected, but it all works out, right?" I looked into Axel's eyes, the hatred was replaced with love.

"Yeah, I have you, don't I?" I blushed. Axel picked up my broken arm, and looked at it unhappily, "How am I going to draw on you now?" He had a small pout on his lips, and I laughed softly. "I'm sorry…I wasn't there to stop Seifer, I broke my promise…" He started to kiss my fingers, and I pulled away when he finished.

"What do you mean you broke your promise? You're the one who got me to the hospital, and you're the one who got Seifer locked up!" I gave him a determined look to show that I was speaking the truth, "You didn't break you're promise," I gave him a peck on his lips, and he kissed me again, deepening it. He pulled me onto his lap, so that I straddled him, and he was sitting up now. He started to run his hands over my sides, and he sneaked his hands into my shirt. I felt his warm hands on my skin, and they stayed there, content with where they are. His lips started to kiss down to my neck, his tongue coming out to explore the new area. I tilted my head to give him more room. He started to suck on the place where my should and neck met, and his arms started to slowly move around under my shirt, hesitantly touching the area.

"Mmh…" I moaned quietly. He took his teeth and started to nibble the area, and then he bit really hard, "Ah!" I gasped, the bite stung a bit, but it turned me on more, and his tongue started to lap at the area, trying to soothe the pain down a bit.

"Hey, Axel, I'm back from w-" My face went beat red. Reno came into the room seeing me and Axel like this. "-ork." I was thankful Axel stopped attacking my neck when Reno came. I hid my face in Axel's chest to try and hide my embarrassment. I heard Reno snicker, "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt." With that, he left the room, probably about to laugh his head off.

"RENO!" I heard Axel yell. He sighed quietly. Axel took my chin and tilted my head to look at him, "Your face is red, you look so cute" He smiled softly, and my face only got warmer. "How about we go outside for a walk, the fall breeze will help cool you off." I nodded.

"A walk sounds nice," I got up off of Axel and we put on some light jackets to go outside in. It was pretty late outside, so it was pretty cold outside. Axel took my hand and we started to walk towards the park. There wasn't a cloud in the night sky, so the moon and stars were plenty of light to see our surroundings.

"A midnight stroll in the park under a full moon. You're pretty cheesy Axel" I joked, swinging our hands a little bit.

"You know you're enjoying this," Axel said with a goofy smile on his face.

"Next thing you know, we'll go watch a romantic comedy in the theater, and then have dinner at a super expensive restaurant with only partially decent food."

"I'll have to think about that for our honeymoon," I blushed. "There's that adorable blush I was looking for." I glared at him, even though the blush was still lingering on my face for a bit.

We sat down by a weeping willow. We sat in a comfortable silence for a while.

"Tell me a secret, one that no one else knows about you." Axel asked. I thought about it for a while. I smirked.

"When I was younger, I watched a scary movie about robots taking over the world. I got so scared, I got rid of anything that resembled a robot. I even avoided microwaves for the longest time," Axel snorted.

"That's it? Are you still scared of them now?" Axel asked. I looked away.

"…No." Axel laughed, and I hit him half-heartedly in the arm. "Well, what's yours?" I asked, throwing him an accusing look. Though, I was pretty curious as to what his secret was.

"Hmm…" Axel looked up, thinking. He was probably thinking of something ridiculous. "One time, when I was younger, the mail man came to deliver the mail. I was walking past the window when I saw him. I thought he was stealing our mail. I called the police and everything. Then, I got into trouble for 'prank calling' the police. To this day, I still think that mail guy was taking our mail." I snickered.

"Paranoid about innocent mail men? That's harsh," I said.

"No it's not! You should have seen the guy. His eyes glanced back and forth to make sure the coast was clear, and he even looked like a rapist!" Axel defended.

"All right, whatever you say," I sighed. We fell into a comfortable silence again. Axel wrapped his arms around me, and he felt so warm. Even though it was a chilly fall night, I was nice and warm thanks to Axel. Then, I felt Axel's fingers starting to twitch around on my stomach. I squirmed a bit, and I knew that was a mistake. Axel started to wiggled his long fingers all over my stomach now, turning me on my back to better access my torso. I was already laughing my head off.

"Roxy~ why didn't you tell me you were ticklish? That could've been suck a juicy secret to share with me,"

"Hahaha A-Axel Pl-haha please s-stop haha." I could barely make words correctly. My eyes got a bit watery from laughing and even my sides started to hurt. Axel just kept on attacking my sides.

"Ah haha please hahah it hurts haha." Axel ceased his actions after that. I was still trying to catch my breath. I always hated it when people tickled me because I was so tired afterwards. Axel laughed softly at me.

"Shut up," I said, but I couldn't keep a smile off of my face.

"_I'm the trouble starter, fuckin' instigator. I'm the fear addicted, danger illustrated. I'm a firestarter, terrific firestarter-_" Axel's phone started to ring. I could hear Reno's voice on the other end.

"Axel? Where are you? Are you okay? If this is about walking in on you two, I'm sorry, really, but that's no reason to run away! I-" Axel sighed.

"Reno! Calm down, I just went out on a walk with Roxas. We're on our way back home right now, okay?" Axel hung up after that, not bothering to listen to Reno anymore. "Reno is such a mother sometimes…" Axel's eyes widened, "Roxas, I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that!" He seemed kind of frantic about it. I tilted my head, looking at him confused.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. I stood up and offered my good arm to help Axel up, "Come on, let's go home, I'm tired."

We got back to Axel's house and soon went to sleep.

School was even more hectic. The news about me and Axel going out had died down, but there were still a couple kids asking about it. More people had to ask me about what happened to my arm and the stitches above my eyebrow. I didn't need them to know about Seifer, so I just told them that there was an accident. Some kids even asked me if I knew where Seifer was, but most didn't think that I would know anything about him

* * *

><p>Thanksgiving came, and that meant I had my cast on for four weeks already and I didn't have my stitches in anymore, there was just a small red scar. Cloud bought all kinds of food. He had a huge turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, stuffing, yams, corn on the cob, and so many more. We also had a lot of people come over. Everyone from the home was there, except for Zexion, who was invited over to Demyx's house for thanksgiving. Even everyone's social workers came over. Sora, Namine, and I all had one social worker. His name was Zack Fair. He usually talked with Sora, Namine and I were more quiet, and he does try to talk to us, but the conversation always seemed to end awkwardly. On top of the social workers coming, Axel and Reno came over. Riku and his family also came. I met Riku's father, Sephiroth, and his older brothers Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo. Cloud seemed a bit stiff around his family, especially Sephiroth, but he didn't really say anything. Larxene and her mother came, and Xigbar invited Luxord. Selphie and Yuffie didn't want to invite any of their friends over, but they already were pretty close, so I guess they didn't really need to. There was twenty people at the house, and there was a lot of people to feed. Namine and I helped Cloud cook the food. Sora wanted to help, but he was terrible at cooking, so he just did things like setting the table, or getting someone a drink.<p>

Dinner was nice, and it should have been, I was exhausted from all the cooking, and it was nice to just sit down and eat.

After dinner, Yuffie got out her roller skates, and it turns out she got roller blades for Axel, Larxene, and Riku. Selphie and Namine got their skates, and Sora and I got our blades. I didn't really want to roller blade, but Yuffie pushed me into it. We went outside and started to roll around the street.

"Yuffie! I have a broken arm, I shouldn't be roller skating" I said, rolling down my driveway, which was a small hill.

"Oh come on Roxas! Your arm is almost healed anyways. Besides, you only fall if you're doing some super hard trick, it's not like you'll fall just from regular roller skating." I was only good at roller skating because I was good at skate boarding, so my balance was good. I looked around to see what everybody was doing. Riku and Sora weren't skating that much, they were talking about something I couldn't hear about. Axel started to circle them and tease them about what they were doing. Namine and Larxene were skating next to each other, having a normal conversation. I saw Selphie fall down a few times, and Yuffie helping her back up, probably trying to teach her how to skate.

I saw Axel skate towards me.

"Whatcha lookin' at Roxy?" He started to skate around me now.

"Nothing, just you," I said. I skated away when there was an opening, Axel followed.

"Nothing? I'm nothing now?" He got in front of me, mocking pain. I smiled softly.

"No, you're you, you are a drama queen that loves fire and wants to take risks every blue moon. You don't like school work, and you're paranoid with mailmen," I said the last part in a whisper, so that no one else heard. I wasn't someone who would blurt out something like that, but I don't think he really cared if other people knew or not. He even laughed.

"Hmm, that was a good description, but you left out something crucial." He moved my bangs to the side so that he could see my scar before he continued. He looked me in my eyes and said, "I love you." I felt a light blush come to my cheeks. Axel chuckled and I looked away, trying to hide my blush from him. "Aw, come on Roxy, don't hide your face, I love seeing your blush."

"Ooh, now who is the one flirting?" Sora started to circle us like Axel did to him and Riku not long ago. I looked over and I saw Riku talking with Namine and Larxene.

We stayed outside for a while longer. Fall really was a nice time of the year. It wasn't too hot or too cold like summer and winter, and you can go outside during the day, unlike spring where it will pour rain all day every day. We saw Demyx walking Zexion back to our house. Instead of going inside, they stayed and hung out with us.

"Roxas! I haven't seen you in a while, what did you do to your arm?" He asked.

"I was in a fight," I trusted Demyx enough to tell him what really happened.

"With Seifer?" I nodded. He already knew about how Seifer had a problem with gay people, so it was pretty obvious it was him. "Can I sign your cast? Please?" He asked. His eyebrows were curved up and he had a hopeful smile on his face, and he was folding his hands together like he was saying a prayer.

"If you have a pen with you," I doubted he did, but of course, he pulls a sharpie out of his jacket. That was just like him, bringing things that he most likely wouldn't need.

The rest of Thanksgiving was okay, though nothing really happened. We talked and even went inside to talk to everyone else there, but it wasn't anything all that exciting.  
>Namine went over to Larxene's house to spend the night. I was still happy for her, I was pretty glad that Marluxia wasn't going to be there either. Sometimes, I felt as though he was going to rape her at any given moment, but that was probably just me.<p>

* * *

><p>Thanksgiving was on November 25th, which was a Thursday. We had both Thursday and Friday off for vacation. It was Friday now, and I didn't have anything planed. I decided to get a shower so that I could wake up better.<br>After I was done with my shower and dressed, I went downstairs to get a soda from the fridge. I heard the phone start to ring, and I didn't bother getting it when Sora called out from the hallway that he would pick it up.  
>He was on the phone for a minute, and then ran right into the kitchen with a panicked look. I gave him my attention, and then I heard words that I wished I would never hear, words that made my heart stop for a second.<p>

"Namine was in a car crash. She is at the hospital, but she is in a fatal condition!"


End file.
